Why being hospitable is being like God.
Sunday, June 28th, 2020
In my office I have a Royal Albert tea set: the teapot, sugar basin, milk jug, and 4 delicate cups and saucers - all matching. Certainly they are beautiful: and it is important to fill up our life with beautiful things - that is truly to live, to live beautifully, as God lives, and such objects already move our soul to better see and act like the living, beautiful God. Yet that is not the main reason those things are there. The main reason is to welcome visitors to my office as best I can: because no matter their standing, each one is important, each one is beautiful, and each one is a child of God who is owed that respect and recognition and welcome.
Its an example of something the Lord urges us to today: the virtue of hospitality. Its a real virtue! St Thomas Aquinas wrote a famous homily underlining the essential tenor of this virtue, explaining how in the old law, in the new law, and in natural law God commands hospitality to the stranger and the poor.
This should not be surprising to us: if we really are to love each other, if we care about someone, we will welcome them into our home. And we will make our home a welcoming one: to do what we can to tidy it and make sure the person feels comfortable and at ease, expected, honoured as someone around whom, for a time, the activity of the home revolves, as someone important. Of course, this requires some sacrifice on our part: we make the effort to clean and cook and prepare. Perhaps even more difficult, it also requires the gift of our time and attention, maybe for hours, to someone.
Yet it is when we consider this that we realise how like God we become when we offer hospitality. In our very creation God offers us hospitality: first of all in our existence, as he shares the very essence of his being, being itself, with us, and secondly, in the opened heart of Christ on the cross, opens to us the inner life of the Trinity as a home where we are welcomed, honoured, raised up, refreshed, protected from all evil - forever. This truly is what authentic hospitality does: it is a door into the life of the Trinity opened into the world. This is also why hospitality is an essential part of the mission of the Church: by being hospitable, I am opening that door to the stranger - especially to the stranger to God’s love. A generous host opens salvation and happiness to the poor. No wonder Jesus himself so highly regards the hospitable.
So here we see a good example of how laypeople can be missionary: missionary in fact in a way priests and religious are not so easily able to do - to open one’s home to guests, especially to those who are not Christian. Already families are doing that when they welcome their pagan relatives: while not judging them, they are loved - and should be evangelised by the Christian love of the family in that home, by their Christ-centred practices of grace, prayer, service, and by, for example, the images around the home. The dining room and lounge are two great places to place stunningly beautiful and obvious images of Our Lord and Our Lady: they’re not so unhelpful to family life either! Let us consider this week: how can we be more hospitable? How can we make sure we make time to welcome others, and to welcome people who are not so Christian either - not merely for our sake, for theirs also.
