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(Rivista Internazionale - December 1999: Celebrations for the Order’s Ninth Centenary - 2/3) |
Summing up the separate sessions of the Order’s national and international bodies, H.E. the Grand Chancellor, Amb. Count Don Carlo Marullo di Condojanni, said that a Knight of Malta’s life should be based on the principles of spirituality, charity and service.
Spirituality, he said, must first of all be testified to in everyday life, in the family and in society. In union with the church, to which one must feel bound with absolute allegiance, in unison with one’s neighbour and, above all, with one’s confrères, with whom one must constitute a single body aimed at personal improvement and at enhancing the Order’s fundamental ideals of defending the Faith, also with works, against impiety, and helping the needy.
This last is a commitment which directly concerns the basic principle of charity and humility. That is, the virtue and performance of those humanitarian activities which no Knight can shirk, neither when he acts as an individual nor, even more, when he works within the Order’s bodies set up for these aims. Never holding back, bestowing the greatest possible charity in all circumstances, public and private, that he has to face, called to be bashful in his lookings, patient in listening, firm in his acting. In that spirit of service, the third basic principle, which means a Knight must always be ready to act, as his prayer says, for the greater glory of God and to help others, especially the poor and sick, generously doing all he can for their cause. To this end, H.E. the Grand Chancellor stressed, it would be befitting that - in view of the Order’s Ninth Centenary and the Jubilee Year following it to celebrate the advent of the Third Christian Millennium - to promote in all Order’s bodies, spirituality meetings, possibly also with their own national pilgrimages, to prepare all the Knights for these extraordinary community events. It would, he reiterated, be the most suitable occasion for inducing all to meditate on the real significance of two such important events. And to extract from them, thanks also to prayer meetings, all the necessary enlightenment and stimulus. Without forgetting for a single moment that one cannot serve the Order and its aims of charity, solidarity and devotion without a strict spiritual formation. To which, concluded H.E. the Grand Chancellor, every Knight must feel duty bound to aspire without yielding or limitation.