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Anthony J. Frendo writes:
“Death has come up into our windows, it has entered our palaces”; so does the Old Testament tell us (Jeremiah (10.21).
Death has indeed once again invaded us and this time round it has snatched from among us a giant of a person and a dear friend, the Rev. Arthur G. Vella SJ, or, Turu/Arthur as he was popularly known.
I knew Arthur since I was a secondary-school boy at St Aloysius’ College. I recall most vividly having joined a school outing and having alighted from the coach at Xemxija Bay, where I had met him for the first time way back in 1966.
I was immediately struck by his kind smile, his openness and by the fact that when he talked to someone (in this case it happened to be to me), he gave all his attention. We became close friends ever since.
Much has already been written and said about what he did and how he helped many people from across all strata of society, so I would like to concentrate on a few points which are probably less well known and which go to show why Arthur was who he was.
Perhaps not many are aware that he was always ready to learn. He kept studying and updating himself right to the very end of his life; he was a staunch supporter of the intellectual apostolate because he was convinced that we all act according to the principles we believe in.
He succeeded to combine intellectual life with the practical side of life. He was a critical realist and he had great acumen, with the inevitable result that many people sought advice from him. He knew that one had to always assess each case on its own merits and that the Church’s sacraments themselves were, in fact, sacramenta ad hominem (the sacraments are there for the sake of humans) and that therefore the person had always to be at the centre of the Church’s task.
As years passed, he became convinced that Sacred Scripture is truly the soul of all theological study, and being Arthur, he delved into a very solid study of the Bible – always updating himself.
He accepted people as they are, thereby living according to the title of his own doctoral thesis ‘Love is acceptance’. Arthur was a man of prayer and a very humble person; he was, in truth, a self-effacing and unassuming individual and he was always there for others.
Being a true Jesuit priest, he lived according to what the founder of his religious order, St Ignatius of Loyola, used to say, namely that a Jesuit priest had to be a pauper sacerdos Christi (a poor priest of Christ); indeed, when it came to poverty he was unflinching because he knew that greed/avarice was the root of all other evil.
He did not want to attach himself to anything, and he must have been aware that “the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil” (1 Timothy 6:10). He was truly one of those who are convinced that, for the Christian, self-fulfillment is being for others.
Such are the qualities that lie at the basis of Arthur’s greatness; death has snatched him away from us. We have now parted ways, but only temporarily, since one day we too hope to walk together with him on the same path of eternal bliss.