On an ordinary Sunday, going to church can often feel like part of a package tour aimed at tourists just off a cruise liner.

It’s not only the average age of the congregation or the distracted minds thinking about the next port of call. It’s that the prayer leader at the lectern is like a tour guide. The kneeling, the standing and the sitting feel like the shuffling and the trooping through the various rooms of an exhibition called The History of Salvation, one room with a slide show, the other with a traditional song, the next with a re-enactment.

On Friday, however, the funeral of Daphne Caruana Galizia wasn’t like that at all. There was no exhibition, no spectators. It was high drama with a sacrificial victim, grim-faced dignitaries, meaningful absences, a huge Greek chorus and voices crying up to heaven.

Every gesture was electrifying. The stone and paintings came to life. When the priest said of Daphne, “Mietet f’Ibnek u bħal Ibnek” (she was united with your Son in a death like his) the rote words of the liturgy caught fire.

Then there were the readings, the words issuing from the mouths of her sons like swords ripping away the thick veil of appearances.

First came Matthew, reading from Ecclesiastes 3 (1-11; 14-18a), which Daphne had once written was engraved in her heart:

“And I saw something else underthe sun:

In the place of judgement, wickedness was there,

In the place of justice, wickednesswas there.”

Then came Andrew, reading Psalm 62:

“They cherish falsehood;

with their mouth they bless,

but with their heart they curse...

Put no trust in oppressing;

do not vainly hope in robbery.”

Finally, there was Paul, reading from Revelation 12 (7-12), a most unusual passage for a funeral, taken from the battle between the woman clothed with the sun and the fiery-red dragon:

“Woe to the earth and the sea, because the devil has come down to you with raging anger, well aware that he has but a short season.”

Read in the comforts of one’s armchair, with tea and biscuits to hand,Revelation comes across as paranoid and fevered. But on Friday those words were read out while Facebook posts swirled with deranged jokes and cackling celebrations.

For once, Revelation, talking about the rage of Satan, seemed like the measured voice of sanity and realism.

With each reading the world grew stranger. It shimmered in eerie light and darkness. Even the Gospel reading (John 3, 16-21), which began with the most familiar verse of all – “For God so loved the world...” – suddenly swerved into unfamiliar territory.

An assassination like this is a national disaster. The fact that so many people can’t seem to realise this is part of that same disaster

It stopped being the Good News and became, simply, news:

“And this is the verdict: people have loved the darkness more than the light because their deeds were wicked. For everyone who practices evil, hates the light and keeps away from the light, in order that his activities not be exposed.”

Then the Archbishop spoke. It was just for 10 minutes. No eulogies. No anger. No cant, either. He simply underlined Daphne’s most obvious public virtue, her courage, and spelled out what it means for various groups of people.

But in those few minutes he issued urgent though paradoxical advice. We must shine a searchlight on Malta’s inner demons. But we must stop demonising one another.

In the sermon, the paradox was disguised because it came in two parts, in advice split between different audiences. It was journalists who were urged to have the courage to look for the writhing snake of corruption. It was Maltese society as a whole that was urged to have the courage to break the cycle of verbal feuding violence.

Paradoxes are only apparent contradictions. Out of them a certain truth emerges. To resolve the Archbishop’s paradox we need to address the most striking aspect of the sermon: its sheer brevity.

In one way, it was deeply unsatisfying. Mgr Scicluna’s sermons are often brief but a drama like this calls for catharsis, a purifying sense of release and closure. Most funeral sermons in fact attempt closure, giving a summary of the life and virtues of the person about to buried.

The summary, with its sense of completeness, suggests the closing of a chapter and the start of another.

Perhaps that is exactly what Mgr Scicluna wanted to avoid. A life cut so brutally short does not deserve a sermon that suggests completion, the closing of a chapter.

An assassination like this is a national disaster. The fact that so many people can’t seem to realise this is part of that same disaster.

Only a short sermon, perhaps, can indicate that the chapter could not be closed in church. To pretend it could be would have been an additional hideous fiction to be added to the several others we have been fed.

We must finish the chapter ourselves. The advice urged by the Archbishop stops being paradoxical the moment we realise he is pressing upon us the duty to be accountable to each other.

Faced with friends, neighbours and family members who seem to be obscenely indifferent to what has happened, we must have the courage not to turn our backs.

Because they are part of our lives, we should know they are not an alien tribe. We do have things in common with them. Their indifference is a harbinger of what could happen to all of us if the sense of common good and solidarity continues to deteriorate.

Let us not demonise such people. To them we owe an explanation as to why Daphne Caruana Galizia’s death is a national disaster, irrespective of whether you agree with a single word she ever wrote. If we want them to trust our judgement, we must speak as though our judgement is responsive and accountable to them, too.

We must not demonise. But we must recognise the inner demons currently leading to a deterioration of our public goods and institutions, year on year.

Our accountability to our children means we must demand accountability from our leaders.

ranierfsadni@europe.com