By Bridget Spinks
Deacon Robert Galea is 28, two months away from ordination to the priesthood with a contagious love for God and the ability to communicate this in a fresh way to young people.
“I love psychology,” he told The Record when he was in Perth for Catholic Youth Ministry’s One-Year-To-World-Youth-Day Sunday Sesh at St Mary’s Cathedral and performance at the Cathedral Palace on 22 August.
“During our formation in the seminary, we study the way the human person reasons through philosophy and the way the human person perceives and reasons and makes sense of God through theology,” he said.
“That’s why it takes so long,” said the Deacon, who entered the seminary in 2003.
Originally from Malta, an island 45km by 22km with a population of 400,000, Deacon Rob has been studying for the priesthood for seven years.
He will be ordained a priest in Malta on 5 November and is incardinated for the Archdiocese of Malta but will return to Australia to spend the first years of his priestly ministry on loan for at least six years stationed in the Diocese of Sandhurst.
In Malta, the seminarians either spend their Diaconate year in secular work or they’re given pastoral work overseas.
Since Deacon Rob knew Bishop Joe Grech, he was able to arrange to spend his pastoral year in the country Victorian diocese of Sandhurst.
He said he knew when he “landed there,” that this was his place and what he was called to do.
Ministry in Malta where 98 per cent of the population is Catholic is more one of service, he said.
In comparison, the ministry in Australia requires more “reaching out”.
“I’m more a person who likes to evangelise and reach out, especially to teenagers where there is a spiritual poverty,” he said.
Where some see this challenge to evangelise as a threat, he sees the opportunity.
He refers to his path to adulthood as “messed-up” but uses this experience of life to encourage others to surrender who they are totally to God and to develop a personal relationship with Christ.
Not long after he entered the seminary in 2004, he began recording music as a way of reaching out.
He developed a website (thatsworship.com) which began with a blog but today includes a link to his twitter, facebook, youtube feed and even a cache of podcasts.
The podcasts comprise homilies and various mini-testimonies with a fresh angle to the faith: a psychological angle.
They touch on deep aspects of what it is to be human such as feelings of fear and what it means to “commit”.
“I like to reach out to help people be whole as God intends them to be and that includes the psyche,” he said.
When asked whether the attention from fans or the temptation of pride comes with the territory of being a popular musician, he admitted that fame was something that could “batter” his humility but that fame was not something he sought.
“As a secular priest, we have to be with the people, not above the people. No priest who thinks too highly of himself can truly reach out and be with the people,” he said.
“I don’t see myself as famous when I’m among the clergy or seminarians.
“I see myself as one of them. As a priest, you’re always a public person.”
Deacon Rob said that although his audience will think they know him when he is on stage, “they only know a small part” of him.
Hence, he aims to “integrate” his whole ministry with the goal to evangelise from the preaching to the performance to the one-on-one encounters to the liturgy.
“I bring who I am to the ministry. And ultimately who I am and who I hope to be is someone who is in love with God. And I believe that the love of God is not something that’s taught but that’s caught,” he said.
It’s through his music that Deacon Rob primarily reaches the young people he so desperately seeks to evangelise and inspire to build a relationship with Christ.
“My ministry as a deacon and soon as a priest is to preach the Gospel. It’s a message that needs to reach the mind and heart. Music is also a way that speaks to the heart,” he said.
In 2006, Deacon Rob released his first album Closer and in 2008, a follow-up album, What a Day. In July this year, he released a devotional CD to help people pray the Divine Mercy Chaplet.
After Mass at the Cathedral, Deacon Rob played several songs from his repertoire but at one point he encouraged everyone to sit down on the piazza and listen.
He was about to tell his testimony of how he began to turn to cigarettes, alcohol and drug dealers when he did not receive the love he needed from his parents.
“At the age of 11 or 12 I was shocked into the realisation that my parents are not perfect,” he said, adding that he started to rebel, when he felt he would never be good enough for his dad.
“I wanted people to love me and accept me. I needed to be loved. All us here need that,” he said.
Looking into the mirror, he used to hate himself and started to lie about everything, he said.
One day, he lied about one of the rappers he was hanging out with and they sought out his friend and cracked his head on the hotel door, he said.
“I couldn’t go to sleep, I thought of ways to end my life. I had no friends. Then someone invited me to a prayer meeting, similar to WYD,” he said.
This was the catalyst for his change.
“We’re all called to have hearts of fire. When you’re gathered with two million people with hearts of fire, you’re given hope and the ability to move forward,” he said.
“At the prayer meeting, they were friendly. This guy was talking about God in a way I’d never heard; he was talking about God as a friend,” he said.
That night Deacon Rob went home, closed the door of his bedroom and set out two chairs and said, ‘Jesus I want to talk to you.’
“I started to imagine a person in the chair. I started to say Jesus, why did you allow this to happen? I imagined a tear in this person’s eye. But this person was crying because they felt the pain and the anger that I was feeling and they could translate it into tears,” he said.
“This person was looking at me and loving me despite the mess,” he said and added that he committed myself to ten minutes of prayer every day.
He began to tell Jesus about the lie and the “dark and cold places” and realised that God didn’t love him any less.
He said his song, “I surrender to you,” was written out of that moment.
Deacon Rob said he shared his story because he was amazed at where God has brought him.
“As I started to pray and surrender my life to God, I realised how much I was loved. I started to love others, but it was because of what God did in my heart,” he said.
At first he did not want to be a priest but then he changed his prayer and asked God to put the desire to be a priest in his heart, if it was His will. Deacon Rob was 21 when he entered the seminary.
“If he can use me, a messed-up teenager, he can use you. All he needs is a life of surrender,” Deacon Rob said.
Several hearts of young people were touched by Deacon Rob’s music and his ability to reach out the night he performed at the Sunday Sesh.
Mufaro Mutika, 27, came to Australia from Zimbabwe to study in 2008. He has been practising Deacon Rob’s song Deeper for the last three weeks in the St Mary’s Cathedral parish youth choir, which has helped him in his faith.
“Rob is awesome. Through his songs I’ve been drawing closer to God than ever before through the words in them. When he sings ‘There must be more, I’m grateful, don’t get me wrong,’ I think about how God gives me stuff, directs me in every way in my life. God has never-ending love,” he said.
During Mass at the Sunday Session, Deacon Rob encouraged the youthful congregation to draw into relationship with Christ.
“Let’s tell Jesus, I’m not satisfied to know about you, I want to know you,” Deacon Rob said in the homily, encouraging them to “invite Christ into their heart”.
Mufaro said this call to encounter God was “another perspective” and has given him something to work on.
“The relationship is what I’m worried about now,” he said.
St Charles first year seminarian, Mariusz Grech, said that Deacon Rob’s “powerful testimony was inspirational for seminarians”.
He said he has the ability “to speak to youth of our time to meet them where they are at”.
“Listening to him has given me confirmation that I should take with me to the seminary all the gifts that God has given me,” he said.
Mariusz, who has played guitar since he was 10 and performed in the school band, praise and worship bands, had not “picked up the guitar” since entering the seminary earlier this year.
“But it’s part of who I am and I have to give everything to God,” he said, resolved to return to the seminary and return to the strings.
When asked what advice Deacon Rob would give to young people, he said, “Seek to fall in love with the person of Jesus and let that love lead you to the Church”.
“As believers, we need to belong to the people who are on fire. We are called to be coals of fire. If you separate the coals from the fire, you turn to dust,” he said.
“We need to let our hearts be enflamed and surround ourselves with those who are enflamed.”