I died at sea, drowned on a dark night, alone and lost, on my way from Africa to Europe in a small craft. The fish ate me but Our Lady had already greeted me as I died. Now I am in heaven with my Jesus, my Lord and my God, who I know justified me and gave me such great happiness even as I died.
We are sitting around a long table in heaven, with Jesus at the top. We are women and children, and men too, who all perished fleeing hunger and persecution. We are looking down on the world, seeing what is happening, understanding better why we died, and hoping men can now decide things better, so that not so many will die like us.
It's like being at the table in a board room, or a cabinet meeting, or even a big council meeting of the European Union or the United Nations.
We are not angry, nor are we sad. We are just watching with love for all those left behind on earth. Not just our dear ones, but those we don't really know, through whose hands our lives passed and slipped away. We see Africa, we see Europe, with Malta like a fish floating on the vast blue sea. We see those of us who got through alive, some free and at work, some in detention deprived of free activity for long periods. They have heard a prayer to the Virgin Mary in French from the warehouse, which is their prison, to find the answer for their dignity.
The Divine Mercy
On this day did Gabriel come
To greet young Mary in her home. "Hail full of grace," she heard him say, Your God is come with you to stay.
You have but to say the words "I do",
For the spirit to overshadow you.
You will then be the mother of the Messiah,
To fulfil the world's one great desire
So Mary said: "Behold the handmaid of the Lord,
Be it done according to thy word".
And so redemption came to earth
Bringing love and mercy from the virgin birth.
(Mark Cassar Torreggiani)
For this I died, and I am happy with all those round our heavenly banquet where Jesus serves us in the hope that this same Communion of His Body and Blood will strengthen Malta in all its board rooms, its cabinets, and its EU Councils.
May dialogue and respect for human dignity make of our deaths in the Mediterranean waters with Christ the source of life in the New Jerusalem, where we all hope to meet up. May those who have lost contact with Almighty God, may Jews, may Muslims, all come up here with us one day. I no longer live, because it is Christ who lives in me.
The Maltese have stirred up to great strength to persuade the other European nations to help in the drama of life's dignity unfolding on land and sea for all to see. Yet they think they are too small to move the continental mass of humanity definitely in our favour. What is to be done?
It is in Christ's body they have the strength awaiting them. The Church has shone a light in the darkness pointing towards our dignity. Prior attention to this dignity based as it is on God's image in us is the way to solve intractable social and economic problems.
If only Malta could see its love of God spreading all around the world as its own new saint, here with us in heaven, St George Preca, taught you to pray. The people of the world are looking for something, and as the good Cardinal Hume of Westminster said, Malta can do it.
After the collapse of Communism, sealed in Malta, today is the time for the advent of the Common Fund for world development foreseen by Pope Paul VI in his encyclical Populorum Progressio for the beginning of true world development that would now enable Africans to work in Africa.
Malta's strength at the EU table can't be limited to sharing our drowning brothers around the EU: this strength is needed for the 500 million Europeans to get the ball rolling for world development pivoting on our own Africa. Christian solidarity is the fruit of reconciliation and can build the global civilization of love.
It's actually quite easy, because the Doha Development Round awaits agricultural credit creation through raising the profile of the already existing Common Fund for Commodities in Amsterdam. But Malta has been lethargic, wracked by administrative doubts while we walk its streets, work on its building sites, live imprisoned in its detention centres, and die at sea in its waters.
The Minister of Foreign Affairs is able and willing but his staff cannot act to help him set up the common good for fear that Malta is so small that others with particular interests will punish Malta for doing the right thing.
And yet this is the Christian choice for Malta, true to its values and traditions. It will find its freedom in Christ and make holy the temporal order through an exponential growth of its financial services sector in the escalation of the Common Fund.
Maybe last month at the EU council Malta did find the faith and strength to listen to my drowning voice and now, for the love of God and man, will speak up unequivocally on behalf of all Europeans to get world development finally going in the Doha Development Round agreement as the basis of the civilization of love built on the solid ground of zero deaths from hunger now.
Maybe this kind of simplicity is all that is needed from the Maltese for their faith to cut through the EU constitutional complexities and help Europe finally find its freedom again in Jesus, just as we have around the table up here in heaven. Because we have died with Jesus to rise again with him.
It seems that Our Lady will help the Maltese from their own harbour, where so many Africans are landing to balance the politics of trade in cereals and food in the Christian world by writing out the money themselves that will guarantee us a great abundance of food in Africa and give us the chance we need to develop our work enterprisingly.