One hot summer evening three or four years ago I found myself at the Augustinian church in Valletta for a recital of Bach’s cello suites. It seems the timing coincided with what the friars call ‘il-Brevjarju’ (the Breviary), a Liturgy of the Hours prayer that underwrites their daily routine at the friary.

It was fascinating to watch the movements of the friars as they took their places in the choir stalls behind the altar. I imagine the music broke the routine and made their prayers for that night especially sonorous to Whoever might have been listening. And yet they seemed absorbed and quite oblivious to their incidental audience.

Now I happened to know the church and friary fairly intimately. Most Maltese have one church in particular somewhere in their minds, imprinted through hundreds of hours spent staring at the same topography of columns and angels. Mine was Santu Wistin in Valletta.

But it was many years since I had last set knee there, or in any church for that matter. Maybe that was the reason why I was able to look at the Breviary differently. For the first time, I saw and understood the full beauty and value of a quiet life of prayer and contemplation.

Early in the morning last Tuesday, one of those friars made his way to a confessional at Santu Wistin. As always, he said his prayers and prepared to listen to and absolve whatever litany of sins came his way. Minutes later he was found slumped over his prayer book, dead of a massive heart attack.

It is certainly not my intention to write my uncle’s obituary. It would be too incestuous, and it would also be on the wrong page of this newspaper. In any case he would not have encouraged it. Clannishness was one of the things he abhorred. With the exception of his parents, family members could expect no special treatment, nor did he ever seek refuge in the safety of blood.

I suppose the long years he spent living in Rome had taught him that the cardinale nipote was the institution that gave us Piazza Navona and Villa Borghese, but also an unchristian portfolio of scandal and corruption. His experience in Malta probably did nothing to undo the lesson.

The reason I write is that I would like to read my uncle’s life and work as a homage to the very many Catholic priests and nuns who devote their lives to selfless service. My drift is not that my uncle was special, but rather that he was one of many.

I’m sick and tired of hearing people go on about the ‘relevance of the Church in today’s society’, the big question of the Maltese succession, whether or not the bishop is Charlie Hebdo, the Church’s official position on spring hunting, the stand-off between Lent and carnival, and so on.

My uncle saw all of this as a perversion of the Catholic Church. Not that he ever told me so, but I could tell from the way he systematically detached himself from conversations that he wasn’t terribly interested in any of that. I suspect he thought it was best left to the superstar priests, those paragons of self-aggrandisement who play the enfants terribles even as they feed off the Church’s legacy of power.

The model is there in the story of Jesus and the adulterous woman. It is extraordinary that with all the commotion going on around him, Jesus saw fit to scribble aimlessly in the sand. He may well have doodled on, only he was pushed and famously deflated the situation by saying nothing at all about the proper interpretation of the law.

My uncle appeared to have three main loves: art, the Augustinian Order and being of service to others. The first is irrelevant here and simply reminds us that priests and nuns are also individuals. It was obvious he had a fourth and greatest love, but he was not given to saintly spectacle. His grace at family meals was typically brief, curt almost, as if said out of politeness.

I’m sick and tired of hearing people go on about the ‘relevance of the Church in today’s society’

Last Wednesday, someone suggested it might be fit to bury him next to his mother in the family plot. It was a short-lived thought. The right place for him was next to his Augustinian brothers and sisters, and that’s where he went. The Order had given structure to his life in many ways.

He once told me that the most difficult counsel for priests and nuns to keep was that of obedience. Obedience took him to Rome where he worked his health off in one of the highest ranks in the Order. It also made him spend several years among the poor in the favelas of Brazil. Before he left, he gave away all his possessions, including his entire collection of art books.

Rounded bellies and gold rings are an enduring caricature of the Catholic religious life. It is true that my uncle spent years in the baroque splendour of the Augustinian friary in Rabat, among other beautiful places. But it is also true that, like most nuns and priests, he lived out of a suitcase. Poverty must vie with obedience as a difficult counsel. It is probably the more liberating.

Certainly it makes selfless service possible. My uncle was one of thousands of religious people who practically give up their lives for others. He seems to have helped an army of people through difficult times. I don’t suppose he ever had any time for himself, and I know his art suffered as a result.

Christopher Hitchens had a field day on the heroism of ‘selfless’ service in The Missionary Position. Truth is, there was only one Mother Teresa. For the rest, my uncle included, there is no heroism in it at all.

Tuesday morning was it. I don’t believe my uncle, or anyone else for that matter, will enjoy eternal bliss. The point is that somewhere in between heaven and the Church’s position on spring hunting, there is a space where priests and nuns are of much value.

Fr Emanuel Borg Bonello OSA died on February 10, aged 64.

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