After 2000 years

February 10 every year has become synonymous with Malta's baptism in the Christian faith. The dramatic arrival of St Paul brought Christ into our islands. The prisoner apostle imbued in our forefathers a heart burning for the Lord.

Much has happened to our islands in the past two millennia. But what stood remarkable is the fact that the Christian faith has always been somehow present and kept in our country. Seen from the eyes of faith, the power of prayer has surely been instrumental not merely for the faith's survival but much more for its fruition. Obviously the Gospel message rings a familiar tone on this reality. In his farewell discourse Jesus said to his disciples: "I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in me, and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing" (Jn 15, 5). If from Malta hail two sons and a daughter canonised and beatified by the Church, to have sent numerous missionaries all over the world to preach the good news and to have kept solid the value of family life, much credit needs to be given to prayer.

Faith is essentially maintained alive through constant prayer. St Faustina explains this very well in her diary Divine Mercy in My Soul.

"In whatever state the soul may be, it ought to pray. A soul which is pure and beautiful must pray, or else it will lose its beauty; a soul which is striving after this purity must pray, or else it will never attain it; a soul which is newly converted must pray, or else it will fall again; a sinful soul plunged in sins must pray so that it may rise again. There is no soul which is not bound to pray, for every single grace comes to the soul through prayer" (Notebook 1, 146).

Let every Maltese who professes to be Christian take seriously and let himself/herself be transformed by Saint Paul's exhortation in his letter to the Thessalonians: "Pray constantly" (1 Thes 5, 17). At the end of the day it is prayerful people who really make our nation pleasing to God!