Before leaving Malta behind on my blog this year I think that the single most shocking moment for me came when I realised the history of this beautiful bay by which we walked several times. The bay I expected to remember when I left Malta was the one where Paul was shipwrecked but it proved difficult to set that over against the grotesque story of this bay in the Great Siege (referenced in my previous post).
On one grim day of that siege the headless crucified corpses of some Knights of St John were floated over the bay to terrorise their allies. In retaliation, the knights, having beheaded many Ottoman prisoners, fired their heads from cannons back across the bay.
As we enter Advent, this is a good time to remember that the coming of the Light of the World has never ceased to be necessary - for however blue the sky, darkness is never far away.
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