Last Monday was my 50th birthday. Fifty years ago the feast to mark St Paul’s shipwreck was celebrated in the capital city on that day. This took place because February 10 happened to be the first Friday of Lent and given that the immediate Sunday was the first Sunday of Lent, the feast was celebrated on Monday 13. This explains why my middle name is Paul.
Our beloved capital city, Valletta is endowed with three parishes, St Dominic’s, St Paul’s and St Augustine’s – the latter coming into existence when the Dominican Order accepted the establishment of a new parish in 1968. Prior to that year the capital city had two parishes.
Although parochial rivalry had its fair share of triggering off a healthy element of pique over the years and to a certain extent it still does, in certain aspects it has, unfortunately, overshadowed the great connection that exists between St Dominic, founder of the Order of Preachers and St Paul, the Apostle of the Gentiles.
It is a well-known fact that St Dominic had a successful mission as a preacher thanks to the letters of St Paul and the Gospel according to Matthew, elements of the scriptures as documented in various biographies he knew by heart. Moreover, St Dominic and St Francis of Assisi are referred to as the apostles of the Middle Ages.
On January 21 this year, the Dominican Order brought to an end festivities commemorating the 800th anniversary of the establishment of the order by Pope Honorius III through the papal bull Religiosam Vitam on December 22, 1216. Such a closure entailed Pope Francis celebrating solemn Mass at the arch-basilica of St John Lateran in Rome.
On the same day here in Valletta, members of the parish of St Paul were actively engaged in extracting the artistic statue of St Paul from its niche into the church’s main nave – kick-starting this year’s festivities marking the 1950 anniversary of the beheading of St Paul in Rome.
Although I appertain to the parish and feast of St Dominic I have always stressed the point, and led by example, by attending and enjoying all the other feasts celebrated in Valletta, even that organised by the Carmelite community on July 16.
We are fast approaching the culmination of events that will bring about the much-awaited year, 2018, wherein Valletta will be Europe’s capital city of culture. Ironically, cultural activities are supposed to unite peoples within the bloc but humbly speaking the mentioned anniversaries above as happened in 2009 were another missed opportunity of bringing together both parishes and their respective parishioners and to a certain extent all those that have all that happens in the capital city close at heart.
There have been other occasions in recent past that have culminated into missed opportunities in bringing together the distinct parishes of the capital city. Time and time again I reflect on this parochial divide which does not project in a positive way the supposedly Catholic faith we boast we relate to.
I yearn to discover a document that will prove that whoever dreamt of dedicating the second parish in Valletta to St Paul did so because he was pretty aware of the connectedness between St Dominic and St Paul.
All in all it confirms that notwithstanding that we live in a secular state, certain aspects of our religious and cultural life still have to mature. I hope that future key anniversaries become an instrument to ease away the notion of us and them or as St Paul once recommended in his letter to the Galatians: “There is neither Jew nor Gentile… for you are all one in Christ Jesus.’
Ivan Grixti is a lecturer at the Department of Accountancy, University of Malta.