SAINT GEORGE PRECA (1880 - 1962)

Saint George Preca (1880 - 1962)


Malta

He was born in Valletta, Malta, the seventh of nine children. He was ordained a priest in 1906. Horrified at the level of religious ignorance among the people, he set up the Society for Christian Doctrine in 1907. This was a society of laymen who would teach the catechism to the people while receiving instruction themselves. This was unheard-of at the time, and it took twenty-five years and much tension with the Church authorities (including at one point the closure of the Society’s houses) before the Society’s existence was officially approved. Today the Society has over a thousand members and is responsible for the teaching of some 20,000 young people in the Maltese islands, the UK, Australia, Peru, Albania, Kenya and the Sudan.
    He lived a life of perfect unworldliness and evangelical poverty. He composed the Luminous Mysteries of the Rosary in 1957. He was canonized by Pope Benedict XVI on 3 June 2007, being described as “Malta’s second father in faith” after St Paul.

Liturgical colour: white

White is the colour of heaven. Liturgically, it is used to celebrate feasts of the Lord; Christmas and Easter, the great seasons of the Lord; and the saints. Not that you will always see white in church, because if something more splendid, such as gold, is available, that can and should be used instead. We are, after all, celebrating.
    In the earliest centuries all vestments were white – the white of baptismal purity and of the robes worn by the armies of the redeemed in the Apocalypse, washed white in the blood of the Lamb. As the Church grew secure enough to be able to plan her liturgy, she began to use colour so that our sense of sight could deepen our experience of the mysteries of salvation, just as incense recruits our sense of smell and music that of hearing. Over the centuries various schemes of colour for feasts and seasons were worked out, and it is only as late as the 19th century that they were harmonized into their present form.