Session 8

Session 8: An Invitation to Hospitality

PDF of Audio – Based on chapter nine of Soul Feast, pp. 131-148.

Hospitality is deeply rooted in the ancient Near East. It was a cultural expectation. Because travel was dangerous, hospitality codes were strict and offered hospitality to friend and foe. It was a kind of social agreement that transcended human differences in order to meet common human needs. It is not surprising then that hospitality was a virtue for ancient Jews and Christians and for example became a hallmark of Christian monastic spirituality. Hospitality mysteriously linked them to God as well as one another.

Hospitality means receiving the other, from the heart, into my own dwelling place. It entails providing for the need, comfort, and delight of the other with all the openness, respect, freedom, tenderness, and joy that love itself embodies. It is essentially an expression of love. It is an act of sharing who we are and what we have. Thus, hospitality of the heart lies beneath every hospitable act.

The most basic image of God’s hospitality in creation is food. It is no accident that sharing food is the primary expression of hospitality in human culture.

For Christians the second great act of divine hospitality (after the creation of the world) is the Incarnation: “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” It is inconceivable that God should come among us in person to forgive, heal, and share our lives. In fact, this apprehension of God-in-Christ was so momentous to the early Christians that Paul could describe the mystery only as New Creation. The first Creation and the new Creation provide us with a framework for comprehending the immensity of divine hospitality to us.

Hospitality begins with God. How do we respond to such graciousness? Can we make an adequate response to God? It is not in our power to make “adequate” responses to God. God only asks that we offer whatever love and gratitude we have in us. In the upside-down order of grace, the more we empty out our love to God the more we are filled with it. We offer hospitality to God when we make ourselves consciously present to God and listen for what the Spirit is communicating.

We also give hospitality to one another through compassion and the gift of community. Our love for one another is a direct expression of our love for God. What does it take to see in every other person a sister or brother? [Pope Francis’s latest encyclical letter address this very question]. If we cannot truly accept our weaknesses as well as our gifts, we will be unable to love others in their brokenness and giftedness.

While we do not usually associate hospitality with spirituality and spiritual practice, practicing hospitality of heart has implications for every common dimension of our lives. It affects us deeply, our homes, workplaces, neighborhoods, schools, churches, and ways of being a public citizen. On pages 140 – 146 of Soul Feast, you can find reflections on each of these dimensions as “Invitations to Explore.”

Providing hospitality is not easy, especially in a culture where we experience hostility, division and lack of unity. Nonetheless, as those who follow Jesus, we are called to right relationships with one another, called to reconciliation, forgiveness and love. As we learn to receive God’s hospitality to us, we can become more hospitable to God, to one another and our fellow creatures. Living in this way can make us into a certain kind of community, the kind where people may even say, “See how they love one another.”