This is the text of the meditation preached by Father Joseph Hamilton at the Order's Walsingham Pilgrimage last week. We are very fortunate to have some Chaplains who understand the true nature of the Order, Fr Hamilton is most certainly one of them. He has been a friend of the Order in England since long before his vocation to the sacred priesthood, and joined the Order as a layman so has himself lived our vocation of knight; we are grateful to him for coming back to us to assist us in our journey to holiness.
+J.M.J+
As you all know at some point in the 11th century just before the Battle of Hastings the Mother of God chose to reveal herself in this place, as she has done again and again down through the history of the Church as a pledge of her maternal care for us, her children, entrusted to her by her Son as He hung dying upon His cross. Walsingham, like Lourdes, Loreto, Pompeii, Fatima and Knock is treasured by the Catholic faith as a place closely associated with the presence of the Queen of Heaven. But unlike these other apparition sites Walsingham is older, much older, so much so, that if you were to go to the Basilica of the Annunciation in Nazareth in Israel, you will see Walsingham listed as the first Marian apparition site outside of the Holy Land.
Who needs Game of Thrones for an epic tale, when just a mile from here in the slipper chapel you can read in Latin ‘signum magmun apparuit in caelo mulier amicta sole’ - There appeared a great sign in the Heavens, a woman clothed with the sun, standing on the crescent moon and crowned with twelve stars – and there is even a dragon! A great red dragon who drags a third of the stars of the sky from the heavens with his tail, and attacks the woman - but God sends his holy angels to protect her and bear her away – that crowned figure vested with the sun is the same as Our Lady of Walsingham, and the same as Our Lady of Philermo under which title she is venerated by the Order of Malta.
It is no coincidence that Our Lady’s appearance at Walsingham coincides more or less with the foundation of Our Order’s hospital in Jerusalem in the mid-11th century, and that the establishment of the Augustinian priory shortly afterwards, coincides with the foundation of what we call today the Order of Malta. So, given our joint long histories it’s a wonderful sight to see so many of the wider ‘Order of Malta family’ in this place this weekend, a sign that in this country, the charism of the Order is alive and well, at a time when the Catholic Church and Christianity in general is once again under threat in the English speaking world. To borrow once again from popular culture – “Winter is coming”.
This morning I want to reflect a little bit on what it is that brings us here and binds us together as the Order of Malta family. The short answer is of course the charism of the Order – sure, we might have been on pilgrimage here before, maybe we’ve been to the White Knights ball, or the Lebanon camp, or perhaps gone as a volunteer to Lourdes. Perhaps we first encountered the Order at a full-works latin/lace/bells and incense solemn high Mass in the Extraordinary Form – that was my first introduction to the Order as an investment banker a long time ago and looked what happened to me! But no matter what introduced you to the Order, what really defines this weekend, what really defines our identity - Knights, Dames, volunteers, pilgrims and guests, the entire Order of Malta family – from the members of the Sovereign Council to Our Lords the poor and the sick, what really calls us together and holds us there, is Our Charism - tuitio fidei quoque obsequium pauperum - the defence of the faith and service of the poor and the sick. The power of the charism is mediated through the intercession of our patron St. John the Baptist, and expressed in visible concrete terms through the globally recognised eight pointed cross that we wear over our hearts. Which is why we wear choir robes in church - as a physical reminder that the Order has been called out of the world, and set aside by God, and endowed with our charism, a supernatural gift from above - to all our members.
To know the Order is to know John the Baptist - when Knights and Dames come to me for spiritual direction I always start with the figure of John the Baptist. We learn a litte about him in the early part of the Gospel of Luke - about his conception and birth, and we hear a bit more about him in the prologion of the Gospel of John, but being a child of Ignatian spirituality, I think sometimes we need a bit more material to work with, so I always tell members to go off and buy Oscar Wilde’s play Salome. To know the Order is to know St. John.
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| Salome, by Guido Reni |
Wilde’s play, written in French, chronicles the last night of the Baptist’s life and opens with the line “Comme la princesse Salomé est belle ce soir!” - “How lovely the Princess Salome looks tonight!” – but he also provides so much great material for meditation - Herod’s banquet, Salome’s boredom, the dank humid heat of the palace overlooking the Dead Sea, the drunken revelries, the beat of the tambourines, and the confrontations between the daughter of Herodias and John the Baptist whom she tries to seduce, but who refuses her three times. “Let me kiss thee on the lips Iokanaan, suffer me to kiss thy mouth”. John, our patron, tells her that he cannot save her and the only one who can is the Son of Man, who is coming from Galilee. John, our patron and example; always pointing to Christ.
And so it is with good reason that the charism of the Order of Malta springs from the witness of John the Baptist. A charism is a gift of the Holy Spirit to the Church that marks the identity of a Religious Order. It gives its members a particular spiritual strength to carry out the will of God. Again, he charism of the Order of Malta is firstly to defend the Catholic, the Apostolic, the Roman faith from the enemies of our Holy Religion and secondly to care for the poor and the sick. You will hear the members of the Order pronounce that prayer this weekend at all the Masses we attend.
Our charism is one of the oldest in the Catholic Church, pre-dating even that of the Franciscans and the Dominicans, and our patron, St. John the Baptist, remains a particularly powerful model for those living out the promises of a Knight or Dame of Malta. John, the cousin of Our Lord, the miraculous child of Elizabeth and Zechariah, foretold by the Archangel Gabriel, precursor and herald of the Most High, minister, ascetic, preacher, contemplative and ultimately, glorious martyr. His voice crying aloud in the wilderness, “prepare the way of the Lord,” was infused by the Holy Spirit, defending God’s plan for marriage, for which, he was ultimately persecuted by his own co-religionists.
Is St. John the Baptist not a model for us all – in his prayer, his fasting, his preaching, and his courageous defence of the moral law? Today my brethren, you look upon the spiritual children of the Baptist, and from him we draw our Order’s charism – the defence of the faith and the service of the poor and the sick. Through his intercession, beginning with Blessed Gerard, our Order has built cathedrals and priories, hospitals and hostels, castles and estates, and is recognised today as both a great temporal and spiritual power. The Church teaches that the members of our Order are called by vocation to membership in the Order, so that like our forebears, we might take up spiritual battle against the forces of evil, and to care for the most vulnerable in our society.
For nine centuries, the successors of the apostles - the popes and the bishops of the world have turned first to the Order of Malta in their struggles to protect the Church, and for nine centuries Knights and Dames have answered that call, sometimes at great cost – cost in material assets, cost in popularity and public opinion, and sometimes, most gloriously, laying down their very lives in defence of the faith, so much so that our Order even has its own martyrology. Our faithful forebears stand now in the presence of God, and we know as the Knights and Dames, chaplains, companions and volunteer of today, that before them we will someday stand, to give an account of our custodianship of the sacred charism with which we have been entrusted.
One of the best historical examples of our charism in action is, of course, the famous siege of Malta The spring of 1565 was a troubling time for the Catholics living on the island of Malta, (just as the spring of autumn of 2017 is a troubling time for Catholics whether we are here in the UK where one of your MPs has been more or les maligned for speaking up against abortion or indeed in Australia where the Church is being attacked for its defence of the Christian understanding of marriage). The Knights of St. John who held the island knew that Suleiman the Magnificent had launched an armada against them, with the specific intention of exterminating the Order.
The strategic importance of Malta at the time in military terms was overshadowed by his personal hatred of Trinitarian Christianity and the Knights who embodied so many of the virtues I have just mentioned. When the first ships of the fleet appeared on the horizon, - can’t you just imagine the fear that must have inspired? Fra’ Jean de Valette, the Grand Master of the Order, had all the bells across the island rung and summoned the 900 or so Knights to Holy Mass and Chapter, a little like we are gathering here this morning. And then he made the following famous speech, many of you will have heard this before but it’s worth setting in front of ourselves again as we begin this weekend of retreat.
The Grand Master said: My brothers, “It is the great battle of the Cross and the Koran, which is now to be fought. A formidable army of infidels are on the point of invading our island. We, for our part, are the chosen soldiers of the Cross, and if Heaven requires the sacrifice of our lives, there can be no better occasion than this. Let us hasten then, my brothers, to the sacred altar. There we will renew our vows and obtain, by our Faith in the Sacred Sacraments, that contempt for death which alone can render us invincible.”
For those of you who are worrying that is fighting talk from an Irish priest you can relax, I am not calling the OMV to crusade in Walsingham. But the Grand Master made a key point. The beating heart of the Order of Malta is the Blessed Sacrament, without it, our ambulances and aeroplanes, our hospitals and schools, our clinics and homeless projects are fruit on a branch that is destined to wither. Holy Mother Church accords great honour to the Order of Malta? Why? Because for 900 years the Order has taken up arms, both temporal and spiritual in defence of the Catholic faith, and now in 2017, we must do so again. Our charism is first to defend the faith, the Roman Catholic faith against the enemies of religion. It is clear through the flourishing of the order here in the UK that the charism is kept alive and honoured. In other places there has been a real temptation to lose the defence of the faith and focus on our works – but that is a betrayal of the charism - and our Holy Father Pope Francis has warned the wider church against this.
The day the Knights of St. John forget ‘tuitio fidei’ we risk downgrading the Order into a rather posh NGO and dining club. We can’t pick and choose how to live out the charism. It is the gift of the Holy Spirit, if we refuse the gift, or try to reshape it in our own image we become guilty of the grave sin of Spiritual Pride. For the last century we haven’t needed to focus so much on tuitio fidei, but in many ways with the collapse of the Church in the ancient strongholds of Christianity and the resurgence of militant Islam and militant atheism, I really believe the Holy Spirit is calling us to remember the first part of our charism. Be it mine to practise and defend the Catholic, the Apostolic, the Roman faith against the enemies of religion – Confreres and Consoeurs they are not just words.
The shadow of what Pope St John Paul II called the culture of death has cast itself heavily over the English speaking world, and it is the vocation of the Knights of St. John to be in the vanguard of the defence against it. It is the vocation of the Knights of St. John to mount that defence. It is the vocation of the Knights of St. John to be that defence.
You know, there are many stories of heroism from the siege of Malta but one in St. Elmo was one of three key garrisoned points on the island of Malta and it was here that the Ottomans unleashed their greatest strength, their elite infantry, the Janissaries. The fighting was savage but when Mustapha, one of the Sultans’ generals. finally called off his troops, it was estimated that he had lost nearly 2,000, most of them the cream of the Janissary advance guard. The defenders had lost only ten Knights and seventy soldiers….
It was at the close of this day that a young French Knight of Auvergne, Abel de Bridiers de la Gardampe, was shot and mortally wounded. As his friends ran to help him, he motioned them back with the words: “Count me no more among the living. Your time will be better spent looking after our other brothers.”
While the cannon thundered, and the fire rained down from the walls, and the Janissaries came on in wave upon shouting wave, La Gardampe dragged himself to the chapel of St. Elmo. In the afternoon, when the Knights of the Order made their way to the chapel to give thanks for what seemed almost a victory, they found the Knight of Auvergne stretched dead at the foot of the altar. That is how a knight St. John lives. That is how a knight of St. John dies. Of course we are not all called to red martyrdom but we might be called to white martyrdom and in doing so we follow the footsteps of the Baptist.
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| Herod's Palace at Machaerus, the ruins of the courtyard where Salome danced (photo by the Editor) |
As Catholics we realise of course that it is John who lives and Salome who is dead. And this captures I think once again the relationship between a Knight or Dame of Malta and the world. The Enemy seeks initially to seduce the Knight, for after all a fallen Knight or Dame is a scandal and a wound to the Church, but if they stand firm in the face of the seduction - the attack changes very swiftly and the Enemy seeks their destruction.
Walsingham is a stark reminder of what is at stake here. Think about it, the mother of God revealed herself in this place to a Saxon noblewoman who built her the holy house, just a few years after the Hospitallers founded their hospital in Jerusalem, within years this place had become a major centre of pilgrimage for people s from all over Europe. The Augustinians came and built a priory, the Franciscans an Abbey, kings and queens, nobles, and Knights of St. John cam to worship here and yet somehow despite all this goodness, evil came to Walsingham one day, and as the Church fell before its power, Evil did not just leave the Holy House to fall into ruin - it annihilated it, the very foundation stones were dug up, so that no trace would be left. The hatred that was manifested in particular against the mother of God in this place can only be described as spine-chilling. The image of our Blessed mother, Our Lady of Walsingham was handed over to the King’s commissioners and burnt at Chelsea, as part of the biggest land grab and asset stripping operation in the history of these islands. Indeed within the year our own confrere Blessed Adrian Fortescue was struck down in odium fidei, hatred of the Catholic faith. Enormous evil happened in this place, as the poet wrote in the Lament for Walsingham:Sin is where Our Lady sat,
Heaven is turned to hell,
Satan sits where Our Lord did sway
Walsingham, O farewell!
So Walsingham was destroyed, but its charism, the gift of Our Lady to the people of England was not, no it lay dormant, and in God’s Providence, when the time was right, the Church has returned. Smaller, more humble, but with a fervour that might well make this shrine even greater than it was before the Reformation occurred.
In a similar way our patron, John the Baptist was not destroyed. Herod may have taken his head but John was reunited with his cousin on High and is not destroyed - rather he is honoured and he has been honoured for century after century, every day in the Roman Canon, on altars from Sydney to San Francisco and beyond, and his spiritual sons and daughters fill Walsingham this weekend. How blessed is the whole Order of Malta family to have such a patron!!!
This weekend will be a time of great blessing for us. It has been a rough year for the Order, and Walsingham is a great place, is one of the best places, to bring our battle scars, our emotional wounds, and our injuries. Here under Our Lady’s mantle, healing is to be found. If you do find yourself carrying burdens this weekend, then I would urge you to come and see one of the chaplains, don’t let things fester. Come to confession. We all mess up from time to time. I mess up. You mess up. We all mess up. And we mess up again and again and again. No matter what you’ve done, no matter whom you have hurt or by whom you have been hurt, even from within the Order, this weekend see a priest, leave your baggage with Our Lord in the confessional, and let Our Lady of Walsingham’s mantle descend upon you. Tomorrow you return to a cultural and spiritual battlefield. Why not do so having received the healing power of the sacraments?
Whenever and wherever the Church is attacked the Knights of St. John will be there, to raise the standard of the 8-pointed cross, in defence of the faith. Whenever and wherever there are the poor, the sick, and the downtrodden, the Knights of St. John will be there to raise the standard of the 8-pointed cross to protect, shelter, and care for them. Our charism is unique, and our battle is against both the principalities of darkness, and the evil in this world that hurts the most vulnerable in our society, but our glorious patron John the Baptist shows us, that our vocational path as Knights and Dames, companions and volunteers, has been trodden before, that God does not abandon his anointed ones, that faith and virtue ultimately triumph, that our charism endures, and that a life lived in faithful sacrifice to Him and to Our Order will ultimately be rewarded with the crown of eternal glory - and we should be comforted by this knowledge, for it truly, truly transforms our retreat this weekend, into a time moment of supernatural-thanksgiving, grace, and hope. I wish all of you a very blessed retreat.
Laudetur Iesus Christus
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