Mass and Installation of New Hospitaller
Order of Malta
Crypt Chapel, Basilica of the Assumption
June 26, 2023
Humility
Dear friends, on this evening just after the Feast of St. John the Baptist, we gather as the Order of Malta here in Baltimore area to celebrate the Feast of Our Patronal Saint and, with great joy, to install John White as our new Hospitaller. Before going any further, I know we will all want to recognize and to give thanks and praise to God for the good work and faithful service of our most recent Hospitaler, Rob Rodgers. Rob, our thanks to you for your dedication to the mission of the Order of Malta, and the humble service you have done in service to that mission. We also wish to express our support and prayers for John White, our new Hospitaller. John and Roxanne, you have served our Order so very generously for many years. As you begin this new role today, we have every confidence that you will fulfill wisely and well this new mission that is entrusted to you.
As you know, Our Holy Father, Pope Francis, has called our Order to a time of renewal. In so doing, the Supreme Pontiff has put his stamp on our Order. He has done this by calling us to root ourselves anew in our model our saintly patron whom we celebrate tonight, St. John the Baptist, and to do this by placing at the forefront of our order the virtue of humility. St. John the Baptist sought neither honor nor recognition but sought to fulfill the mission for which he was born. This mission was not to lead people to himself, to build up a following for himself, but rather to point to the One who is to come, the One who alone satisfies the needs of the human heart: Jesus, the Christ. As John famously said, “He must increase. I must decrease.”
How often, in our weakness and brokenness, we are tempted to find our happiness in the praise of others. How often do we seek to assert our will, our plans, or our opinions. How challenging can we find it to give without counting the cost, to serve without recognition, consoled only by the certainly that we are doing what our heavenly Father has called us to do, that we are fulfilling the mission we were sent to accomplish. Indeed, how difficult it is for us to overcome our pride and to walk in the way of humility, performing good works without drawing attention to ourselves but rather doing so with the confidence that our “Father who sees in secret will repay you” (Mt. 6:4).
Vocation
Growth in the virtue of humility is the work of a lifetime but this virtue of humility is precisely what Pope Francis has placed at the heart of all that we are called to do. In so doing, to repeat, he is calling us back to the very roots of our Order. While many Knights set out for the Holy Land seeking fame or glory or fortune, Our Founder, Blessed Fra’ Gerard, set out to care of the sick. His course of action was not merely a response to humanitarian need, important as that was, but rather a response to what the Lord had called him to do. From the beginning, to be a Knight of Malta was a matter of joining an elite club, but rather a matter of discovering a divine vocation.
So too today, the good works of our Order are many and far-reaching. In a wide variety of ways, here at home and across the globe, the Order of Malta responds the needs of our sisters and brothers who suffer. Indeed, the Order ius rightly respected, even beyond the Church, for the charitable work and humanitarian assistance that it offers. But this is not merely the fruit of our energy, goodwill, or generosity. Rather, it is a response to a divine vocation, a call from the Lord.
No one had a stronger sense of vocation than John the Baptist. Even in his mother’s womb, he heralded the coming of Christ, and he would dedicate his whole life to announcing the advent of the Messiah. That same sense of vocation also goes back to the earliest days of our Order. Fra’ Gerard set up field hospitals to care for the sick and wounded. From these early field hospitals, there emerged a solid foundation of charitable works and institutions.
And what is the image that the Holy Father uses to speak of the Church as she responds to the needs of a suffering humanity? A field hospital! Dear friends, in going back to our roots, in responding to our vocation, we take our role in that field hospital caring for the needs of those who are suffering in mind, body, and spirit.
This is what makes the Order of Malta different. There are many good and noble groups of selfless and generous people who do important work in response to pressing needs in our world. But our Order is not only about the works that we do. To repeat, joining the Order and belonging to the Order is a vocation, a call of the Lord to follow him in a particular path, a particular way of life. While this is seen most clearly in the Knights of Justice, who dedicate their lives by religious vows, this is also reflected in the other ranks of the Order, especially in the ways that we dedicate ourselves to formation and to prayer. Belonging the Order is more than belonging to a club; it is a respond to the call of the Lord. It is a vocation.
Witness
What then is the nature of this vocation? Turning once more to our patron, we find the answer: our vocation, our calling, is to bear witness to Christ to another, and before the Church and the world. Our Order commits itself to the defense of the faith and the care of the least among us, especially the poor and the sick. These important aspects of our mission will ever remain. Indeed, this mission is more important than ever in this time when so many wander from the fold, when so many have lost their faith in Christ and his Church, when more and more people among us have never known the love of God revealed in Jesus Christ
Given the needs we see all around us might I suggest that we might consider how important it is for us to continue our mission – but perhaps to approach it in a new way. Pope St. Paul VI, in his letter On Evangelization in the Modern World, said that “modern men and women listen to witnesses more than teachers and if they listen to teachers, it is because they were first witnesses.” These prophetic words, of another John the Baptist, Giovanni Battista Montini, offer us a way of approaching the core works of our Order. In all that we do, in all that we say, we must strive to be witnesses to the world: witnesses who prompt a question in the hearts of those whom they encounter; people whose manner of life leads people to ask, “Where does this love come from? What is the source of the peace and joy I see in this person?”
In a world that so often confuses the worth of the person with their usefulness or their ability to produce or consume, the charity of our Order towards those whom the world sees as useless, prompts a question in the hearts of others: “Why would they care for those people?”. In a world that so often tells us that happiness and freedom come from doing what we want, when we want, how we want, the faithful obedience of someone who seeks to follow the Lord Jesus, to remain faithful to what he taught, to abide in the communion of His Church, despite the flaws of her sinful members – prompts a question in the hearts of others: “Why would a capable and intelligent person follow someone other than themselves?” Witnesses prompt a questions; lived witness has a power to cut through arguments and ideology; lived witness strikes to the heart and opens the heart to change.
The greatest act of charity that we can offer is to lead others to know the love of God that is revealed in Jesus Christ and encountered in the reality of the Church. Like John the Baptist we realize that, while we have our role to play, we cannot offer what truly satisfies the needs of the human heart. God alone can do that. Our mission then is to bear witness. By our way of life, we are called to point past ourselves to point to Another: to the One who truly heals our wounds, by his wounds, the One who enriches our poverty, by becoming poor, the One who consoles our doubts, with the light of his truth.
As we come to this altar in just a few moments, I will hold up the host and say, in the words of the Baptist, “Behold the Lamb of God, behold him who takes away the sins of the world.” Strengthened by this Eucharist, the Supper of the Lamb, may we go forward in humility to recognize our vocation to bear witness, so that in all we say and do we might similarly hold up and say to the world,
“Look! There is he is! Behold the Lamb of God, behold him who takes away the sins of the world!”