One of my friends in college, Mustafah, was a student from Iran who had come to the United States to study. He was “trapped” in this country when the Shah was deposed and the Ayatollah Khomeini came to power in Iran in 1979. Because he was cut off from family, he depended upon aid from various churches to enable him to remain in school. One of my fond memories of him was stopping by his off-campus apartment. It was simply furnished, with the kinds of furniture and items a congregation would collect from its members. Among Mustafah’s many admirable qualities was his practice of hospitality; whatever he had was yours. Even though he had little, he bore no traces of hoarding for himself when he was offered the opportunity to welcome me into his home. As a Muslim and a man of the Middle East, Mustafah had his particular motivations for practicing hospitality. But even so, his practice has stuck with me for over a quarter century as a model for this act of generosity.
Benedictine communities, too, are widely known for the practice of hospitality. The most famous saying regarding hospitality in the Rule states, “All guests who arrive should be received as Christ, for he himself will say, ‘I was a stranger and you took me in’” (RB 53:1). For Benedictines and for Oblates who strive to live by the spirit of the Rule, the motivation for hospitality lies in the trust that Christ himself comes hidden in the guise of the people whom we welcome or rebuff. This insight, while stated later in the Rule than the passage I read this morning, still underlies the section on caring for the sick members of the community. St. Benedict writes, “The sick are to be cared for before and above all else, for it is really Christ who is served in them” (RB 36:1). Terrence Kardong, the commentator, notes that the phrase “before and above all else,” or ante omnia et super omnia, appears also in the works of Sts. Basil and Augustine when they speak of love. “It is, of course, the greatest commandment and it is the root meaning of all Christian service” (Benedict’s Rule: A Translation and Commentary, p. 301).
These two passages from the Rule call me to see—to perceive—not with the eyes of my flesh, but with the eyes of the Spirit. It’s just like trusting that when I eat the bread and drink the wine of the Eucharist, I am truly receiving the body and the blood of Jesus Christ. When I welcome someone to our home, when I yield to a stranger at the checkout line at the grocery store, when I open my heart to the need of a relative, I am practicing hospitality. This hospitality is an act not in the sense of producing a fine and gracious “entertainment experience” for dinner guests, but in the deep and ultimate sense of surrendering my own personal agenda, needs, desires, priorities, and schedules to Christ who comes hidden in the people who step into and out of my life.
When I come to trust Christ, through the gift of faith, to keep his promise to come into my life in this way, then I can practice hospitality that emulates, in its outpouring of graciousness, the hospitality that Mustafah showed me in his tiny apartment in Annville, Pennsylvania, so many years ago.
Ut in Omnibus Glorificetur Deus.