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The model of Benedictine hospitality
outlined in the Rule provides us with a way to be Christ’s welcoming servants today as both receivers and givers
of grace3. I’d like to share an example.
One day last summer it was late and at the end of a hectic day. I was tired
and anxious to get home. As I stepped out through the church door I realized
that the homeless family who was staying with us at the church must have arrived
for the evening. (Each summer we housed families as a part of the Interfaith
Hospitality Network in our county.) I thought, “I should go down and
greet them and see how they are doing. But I really don’t feel like it.” However,
my sense of responsibility won out…It was important that they knew we
cared. And so, with weary bones I trudged down the steep stairs of the Undercroft
(the church basement) asking God to help me effervesce when I felt pretty uninspired.
Walking into the room I was greeted by the glad voices of mother and children.
After hugs all around I sat down and spent 15 or 20 minutes with them, inquiring
about their day and talking about all sorts of things. When I got up to leave,
I was a different person. I felt refreshed and energized. Had I just had a
vacation and didn’t know it?? In truth my reluctant offer of hospitality
was repaid ten-fold. What small grace I felt that I gave poured back onto me
as a wave of love.
All you and I need to do is to make that space of hospitality around us as
Henri Nouwen suggested [in his book Reaching Out] and to keep our eyes, ears
and hearts open to what God would have us do. When our center rests in God
we can empty ourselves as Christ did (Phil 2:7) and become free to replace
hostility with hospitality. We are then able to welcome friend or stranger
as a guest, Christ to us at that moment, and to receive the gift that they
offer to us.
We are often far from this today. Yet, with our families, in our circle of
friends, in the church, at work and with Christ’s help, we can set aside
our agendas and our expectations about people. We can instead make room inside
ourselves for others, one person at a time. We can provide a space of hospitality
into which others may freely enter and feel safe because they know that they
are accepted. We can meet our families and friends, strangers and guests “with
expanded hearts and unspeakable sweetness of love.”
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