Our People

Mass of the Nativity of St John the Baptist, Patron of the Order of Malta, and of the Reception of New Members into the Order

St Mary’s West Melbourne

By Most Rev. Anthony Fisher OP
Auxiliary Bishop of Sydney
25 June 2005

The birthday of St John the Baptist is in a sense our birthday too. Ours, my eminent, excellent and reverend fathers, my confreres and consouers, because we are Christians and John’s infancy foretells the coming of the Christ and the beginnings of the Church. Ours also because it is the birthday of our Order, for it was from a religious community and hospice-infirmary dedicated to St John the Baptist that our mediæval Order emerged under the influence of Blessed Gerard. And ours, in the case of those newly joined to us, because they are reborn this day into the Order.

The story of the infant John is full not only of birthday sentiment but of profound significance for his Order. For one thing, Luke recalls the story with an eye for heraldic detail. It begins with a formal address by Luke to “the most excellent Theophilus” and then sets the scene with the details of who was the king of Judah and who the high-priest and from which division. Each character is then introduced by their title and pedigree: Zechariah is high-priest of the division of Abijhah; his wife Elizabeth is of the daughters of Aaron; the Archangel Gabriel is of the royal court of God; Mary is betrothed to Joseph of the royal house of David.

Just as Luke introduces the Gospel with courtly formality, the Archangel Michael does the same with his two annunciations. To Zechariah he says “I am Gabriel, who stand in the presence of God, and am sent as his herald to bring you this good news”; to Mary he gives a royal salute “Hail O highly favoured one, Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee!” He then announces her royal son: “He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High and the Lord God will give him the throne of his ancestor David and he will reign over the house of Jacob for ever.” Mary responds with courtly grace: “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord” and in due course proceeds to Bethlehem, royal David’s city.

This first chapter of Luke is in fact packed with courtly language about the ‘righteous’, the ‘blameless’ and the ‘law-abiding’, about ‘custom’ and ‘duty’, above all, the language of ‘Lord’ and ‘Lady’. ‘Lord’ occurs 17 times in that one chapter, and Mary is called by her kinswoman Elizabeth ‘the Mother of my Lord’ or ‘the Queen Mother’, ‘Our Lady’. Then comes this afternoon’s pericope: and again there is concern for genealogy, family names and right order. After this is Zechariah’s Happy Birthday song, the Benedictus, and it is a knightly song of fealty and of victory promised: “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel for he has visited his people and redeemed them and has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the royal house of his servant David… saving us from our foes, performing the works of mercy he promised and remembering the oaths he swore…”.

Yet for all this courtly language there is subversive talk as well. The typically aristocratic concern for pedigree, first John’s, then Jesus’, is only necessary to record because there is unseemly rumour and a whiff of scandal in both cases. The Queen Mother talks bolshie talk of God “casting the mighty from their thrones and raising up the lowly” in her Magnificat. Instead of a palace the new king David is born in a stable and enthroned in an animal’s feeding trough; though an angel host sings his Birthday Song, the Gloria, his courtiers are the lowest of the low, mere shepherds. Soon our royal family will flee as refugees. Amidst the soulless bureaucracy of Caesar’s decrees and the savagery of Herod’s, a new chivalry is born. In this new kingdom all are called into the aristocracy, not just a select few born that way; for this is an aristocracy of spirit, of God’s gentlemen and gentlewomen.

And so the Sovereign and Military Order of the Knights Hospitallers of St John has its knights and dames, some of them rather grand, others like Mary of a more anonymous pedigree, the lowly raised by grace to share the throne of the mighty and in due course we hope of the Almighty. We aspire not to worldly honours so much as aristocracy of spirit: to refinement and culture, to righteousness and virtue, to reverence for our God and zeal in promoting our faith, to magnanimity and magnificence, to humility and courtesy, above all to heroism, self-sacrifice and generous service beyond the call of duty. Our lords are the infant of the stable and his royal brothers the poor and the sick; our lady is the poor Miriam of Nazareth; our vesture is the cross. Like the newly pregnant Mary who does not rest on her laurels but rather flies to the assistance of her elderly and pregnant kinswoman, so we are hospitallers who bring comfort to the poor and the sick. Like Gabriel sent from the court of God to the world of men, like John declaring “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world”, we are sent as heralds of the Good News, as standard-bearers for our Catholic faith.

Michelangelo Merisi—better known as Caravaggio—had a somewhat rocky relationship with our Order. He was regularly imprisoned for crimes such as throwing stones at Roman Guards or artichokes at a waiter or for brawling in defence of his mistress or his vanity. He once killed a man over a disputed tennis score and fled to the then spanking-new city of Valletta in Malta. Built by Jean de la Vallette, the French Grand Master of our Order after the epic siege of Malta only a few decades before, Valletta proved a haven where Caravaggio painted several masterpieces, including The Beheading of St John the Baptist made for the Order at St John’s Cathedral. It is the only work he signed and it is signed with an 'F' in the blood coming out of the head of St John. The ‘F’ is short for ‘Frate’, the word, like confrere, by which members of the Order of Malta addressed each other: for in return for this great work he was on 14 July 1608 received into the Order of Malta as a Knight of Magistral Grace. His membership was not a long or glorious one: within a few weeks, either because word of his prior offences had reached Malta or because of new misdeeds, he was expelled from the Order and imprisoned. Let that be a warning to our new members!

Caravaggio’s link to us remains, not only because of his brief fraternity with us or because he painted images of our Grand Masters and members, but above all because he so often painted our heavenly patron St John the Baptist with the banner and lamb that tell his message. They are masterpieces of art and religion, of skin and fabric, above all of darkness and light. For the gift of “light for those in darkness” is the climax of the birthday song that Zechariah first sang to his newborn son John. That birthday song tells of the call to that new Christian chivalry, that makes us royal heralds of the good news, peacemakers for a troubled world, balm for old wounds, food for hungry bodies and souls, enlightenment for the bleak and the confused. Especially to each of you who are reborn into our fraternity this day, Zechariah sings again his birthday song to you: “You, little child, are called to go before the Lord to prepare his ways, to bring knowledge of salvation to his people, to show the tender mercy of our God, to give light to those in darkness, to guide feet into the way of peace!”