you can curse the darkness or light a candle

Liż-"żgħir" li ħallejt warajja l-Etjopja

X’kien li ġibidni

u li saħħarli ‘l qalbi

kull meta bennintek

u żammejtlek idejk?

Kienu għajnejk

profondi,

u n-nifs

iħarħar?

Il-ħarsa qalila

li ma ċċedi

b’xejn?

Il-friegħi dgħajfa

minn pal’t’id ċkejkna

iggranfati ma’ sebgħi

b’kilba tal-ġenn,

bħal donnok f’dik il-qabda

ridt taħkem

lill-Ħajja

biex le ma taħrablek

u int

tibqa’

hemm.

Narak, Qalbi,

għada

pit-

għada

tilgħab f’nofs ix-xita

traxxax gelgul.

Narak,

ma’ ħutek

minn ommijiet oħra,

għajnejk kbar leqqiena

jixorbu kull dħul.

Imm’għal issa

stenna

bejn gverta u mitraħ

bil-pajp tal-ikel

nieżel

m’imnifsejk.

Ħallini, fil-memorja,

nitimgħek darb’oħra,

waqt li qalbi

titgħawweġ

għax imbegħda

għajnejk.

What Porneia in the Gospel of Matthew Really Means - by Biblical scholar Fr Paul Sciberras

I am reproducing an article written by Biblical Scholar, Fr Paul Sciberras (see detailed bio below article). Whereas the text is his intellectual property, I have added the emphasis in bold.

Following the permission that Moses granted to the Jews that a husband can leave his wife on condition that he writes the bill of divorce (Dt 24,1), two schools of thought emerged: that of Shammai admitted divorce only in the case of adultery, while Hillel’s liberal school admitted divorce even when the wife no longer pleased her husband, whatever the reason may be. In Mark 10,1-12 and Mt 19,1-9, the Pharisees challenged Jesus to choose between one school over the other. Jesus replied that he did not accept divorce and was only permitted to the Jews “because of the hardness of their hearts (sklērokardía)” (Mt 19,8), i.e. the human being’s refusal of the plan of God (Dt 10,16). Moreover, Jesus stated that the search for God’s project for marriage cannot be found in Deuteronomy (i.e. the Second Law of Moses) but in “the Beginning” (Hebrew bereshit), in Genesis, the First Law of God himself: “Male and female he created them (Gen 1,27). Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh (Gen 2,24). Therefore, what God has joined together, no human being must separate” (Mt 19,6).

The verb used by Jesus “must not separate” (mē khōrizetō) is present imperative: meaning “never ……” In Deuteronomy, only the husband could send away his wife. In Mark, Jesus vehemently opposes divorce to both men and women: they would both be committing adultery if they separate and remarry (Mk 10,11-12). In Matthew 19, 3-12, the Pharisees ask Jesus: “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?” After rejecting divorce outrightly Jesus’ reply contains a phrase that has created so much debate: “I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for porneía(rabta ħażina [Saydon 1954], żwieġ ħażin [Għaqda Biblika 1984, 1996, 2004],żena [Karm Zammit], fornicatio [Vulgate], unchastity [NRSV], prostitution [BJ], union illegale [TOB], impudicitia [EP]) “and marries another woman commits adultery (mochátai)” (19,9).

One of the interpretations that was bestowed on porneía, is “adultery”. According to this interpretation, Jesus says that divorce is only permitted in the case of adultery. If such is the case, Jesus’ reaction to the Law of Moses: “because of the hardness (sclērokardía) of your hearts”, and the disciples’ astonishment: “If this is the situation between a husband and wife, it is better not to marry” (19,10) will no longer be understood.

If porneía meant “adultery”, Jesus would be unintelligble when in the same verse 19 he says that when a man sends his wife away, except for adultery, he would be committing adultery! Moreover, Matthew himself, in 15,19 writes: “For out of the heart come evil thoughts—murder, adultery (moicheía), sexual immorality (porneía), theft …” If porneía was only meant as “adultery”, Matthew would not have used another wordmoicheía that also means “adultery” immediately before porneía! Hardly. Matthew seems to have taken this verse from Mark, who, in the same list presented in Matthew the words moicheia and porneía are not presented contiguously. Matthew presents them side-by-side.

In the Commandments, the verb in the Greek Septuagint translation for “do not commit adultery” is always the verb that is derived from moikheía (see Ex 20,14; Lev 20,10; Dt 5,18). We find the exception clause only in Matthew, written for Jewish-Christians who still cleaved to the Jewish Laws prohibiting zenût(porneía), a technical term that means “all types of incestuous unions between relatives” prohibited by Leviticus 18,5-20. For this reason the Council of Jerusalem (Acts 15,20.29) established abstinence from porneía: marriages considered valid in the eyes of Roman Law, but null and prohibited by Jewish Law.Christians had to be pressed upon not to enter illicit and incestuous marriages. They could not only disband such illicit unions, but they were duty-bound to cut off anyone from the community who were in such an arrangement and persisted in remaining (1Cor 5,1-5). This sense ofzenut/porneía as an incestuous marriage between relatives is highlighted by Paul in 1Cor 5,1. Paul would not have said: “It is actually reported that there is immorality (porneía) among you, and of a kind that is not found even among pagans”, if porneía did not refer to marriage between relatives (“a man living with his father's wife”).

Therefore the word porneía in Mt 19,9 must be translated not as “adultery” but as “illicit union”.

--------------------

Fr Paul Sciberras

Fr Sciberras graduated S.S.L. from the Pontifical Biblical Institute, Rome with a dissertation entitled Exetítheto autois kathexēs. A Study of the Repeated Visions in Acts 10,1-11,18 in 1992. In 1994 he was declared Candidatus ad Doctoratum, after completing the preparatory year for the Doctorate in Scripture Sciences (S.S.D.).

Fr Sciberras has been lecturing at the University of Malta since 1995. He is Member of the Society for Biblical Literature, the Associazione Biblica Italiana, and the Associazione Ex-Alunni Pontificio Istituto Biblico (Rome). Moreover he is an Academic Member of the Malta Bible Society, Member of the Theological Commission of the Archdiocese of Malta, Member of the Commission for the Revision of the Bible in Maltese, Co-editor of the Maltese Bible in Braille, as well as consultant for the project of the Bible in Sign Language. For more info. regarding other articles he has written please visit http://www.um.edu.mt/theology/scripture/staff/psciberras)

Dies Irae (Day of Wrath)

tick-a-tocking threats and troubles

taught by trumpeting types of tingling

traits attempting tactic tumbles,

tackling titter tantrums tinging.

manoeuvring mobs' maddened mumbles

mashing matchsticks markedly mixing;

mean material machinations

improvising damned minist'ring.

would a lonesome heart slightly miss

and an idle eye shed a tear

if my life were sudd'ly stopped,

steered away from the now and here?

break a bark by babbling blunt bliss:

heated heathens handily hiss.

(Note: the point of these stanzas lies more in the effect of the words placed side by side than the message. of course, the verses may make some kind of sense; in the end, it's all a single package XD)

the alluring call of...New Media :p

The Seminary and University academic year's gradually approaching its end, leaving me with two months of Pastoral work at the Bormla Parish and the Mater Dei Hospital Chaplaincy as well as the prospect that just two years is what remains of my journey towards the priesthood, my reaction to the latter being a resounding "Yikes!" I can't help imagining what the future'll hold for me as regards my assignments upon my ordination...the spectrum

of possibilities seems limitless, and, to be honest, I see my

self fitting in a wide array of areas, making it harder for me to predict. While the post the Archbishop'll "send" me to is as obscure now as it'll be in two years' time, another aspect is slowly becoming clearer, this being, the subject matter of my Licenciate thesis. Once again, in considering this, I'm thinking ahead by quite a bit, there being a whole year left, at the end of which I'll be sitting for my second batch of finals, comprising the work done in flipping five years, before I start working on such a piece of writing proper. Still, some daydreaming, and (why not?) forward-looking's never harmed anyone :p

So here I am, lads and ladies, typing away at my keyboard, surfing from Facebook to myspace to some blog and youtube vid (thinking of getting myself a twitter page), that it hits me: New Media's an awfully captivating topic that opens up all sorts of frontiers, not to mention, a mostly unexplored territory where the Maltese Church is concerned, notwithstanding the fact that some parishes have really efficient websites (tarxienparish.org), other groups having made an impressive job at using the internet's potential as they deemed best (read Y4J (y4jmalta.org), KDZ (kdz.org.mt) and M.U.S.E.U.M. (forza9.com)). Yet on a diocesan level, there's much that can be done, and if I focus on a specific branch of New Media's encounter with Theology (along the lines of Catechesis or Spirituality, Youth Work, Public Opinion or community work) things may get even more interesting. Oh gosh, my adventurous, boyish Peter Pan alter-ego's dawdly emerging even in this project, the lure of the unprecedented and uncommon being too attractive to ignore.

Hehe, I can't wait....

Oh Happy Day!

While Minister Mifsud Bonnici pats his Italian counterpart Maroni on the back for the latter’s “achievement” in deciding to send desperate illegal immigrants back to Libya, I gawk at this news item in disgust. With Malta having tackled the issue admirably since its inception back in the years, it has finally given in to the pressure posed by arrogant Nations, who, having had the fortune of developing as to allow themselves a high standard of living, are ignoring the rest of the world to enjoy their “West-countries” bubble.

 

In the mean time, individuals, whose only option for survival, that is to hold on to their lives, being hunted down in their country of origin and lacking the resources to fight back, was to flee, leaving loved ones and the life they knew behind through the only door left ajar, albeit illegal. Chances were that after having gone through a painstaking journey that pushed their humanity to its limits, having to cross miles of the Saharan desert with as little as a bottle of water and the fierce Mediterranean, their case would be examined for worthiness and they would be allotted their well-deserved humanitarian status on reaching the shores of a civilised state. With this opportunity now being made a forlorn possibility, they might as well hand themselves in to their oppressors and face death, as the Europeans sip champagne through cynical smiles.

 

Oh happy day! Oh happy day indeed

 

ACTing Out For All To See

hey ppl!

am lying in bed, strolling through memory lane with a wide smile on my face as I envision the happenings of these past two weeks...being given an hour and a half to decide whether to join ACT or otherwise--the momentous meeting at M'Scala, with an articulate and mindful Anna, an eagerly smiling Luke, a very apprehensive Jean, an enthusiastic Mario and a continuously dreaming Mizzi who strutted along the promenade with us tailing behind while he recounted his “vision” which he titled EUREKA!! And what if we had kept that name--we wouldn't have taken up "Lemon Tree" for a theme-song, or would've the uri-NA connection have been enough to connote lemon juice lol? I simply can't forget the day spent at the seminary deliberating over our manifesto, name, logo, which animal best represented us, university and everything under the sun, or the photoshoot, where I shook Bev’s hand for the first time and during which we all proved that we could compete with Mizzi’s modelling skills :p 

I can still see Jenny smirk as we trailed towards GW for the press conference that announced our existence to the world, Francesca’s smile lighting up her face as she donned her yellow shirt for the first time minutes before it started. Then came the longwinded KSU A.G.M., the common room being practically divided in half as to who supported who, me, myself and I immediately drawing the conclusion that ACT’s mission was to do the best possible such a bridge between the two would be set up. Soon after, it became official for one and all that uni was heading towards elections, the craziest two weeks of my life ensuing henceforth. My heart simply swells with joy at the opportunity I was given to talk to so many students from all sectors of uni, all of whom did not think twice in voicing their opinion, this being exactly what I was after, Ian, ever the hard-worker with an eye for detail (of course!) scrambling all over the place to catch ACT’s various “moments” on camera, while Owen brightened our day through some timely joke. 

Guys and gals, team members as well as runners, strategists and supporters, the above descriptions do not do justice to the way my life has been enriched through getting to know, work and share ideas with you. As many of you know, from its inception, I regarded this venture as a “Win-Win” situation for all sorts of reasons. Now, almost twelve hours after the results of block votes were made public, I can honestly say that for me this is anything but a loss, the “victories” if you will ranging from personal relationships to viewpoints to, in my case as a prospective priest, an occasion to grow more in love with the idea that each and every instance of my life is to be given up to living with/serving/spreading Truth.

 

I’m sure the action has not been taken out of ACT :)

Cheers all! God bless you always.