13th Sunday 2023
2 Kings 4:8-11, 14-16; Romans 6:3-4, 8-11; Matthew 10:37-42
Hospitality features prominently in today’s First Reading and Gospel. The “woman of rank” is hospitable to Elisha, and is rewarded for it, whilst Our Lord, in His instructions to the Apostles, points to the rewards which will be given to those people who are hospitable to them in their missionary journeys.
Through the ages, monasteries have been oases of hospitality, though I must confess to raising an eyebrow when I took up residence at Hyning. It was shortly before Christmas in 2018, and I read on the cover of the handbook a quotation from St. Benedict: “Let all guests who arrive be received like Christ”. As it was so close to Christmas, all I could think of was the Bethlehem innkeepers: “NO ROOM! NO ROOM!” I presume that this was not what Benedict, or the Sisters, had in mind.
It strikes me that the woman who showed hospitality to Elisha was an exception to what seems largely to be the rule: namely, that the less people have, the more likely they are to be hospitable. This lady is described as “a woman of rank” yet it is often the poor who are most willing to share. People in the developing world are renowned for their hospitality, as are the Irish, who have, at least until recent decades, been very familiar with poverty.
In a previous parish, and one hardly brimming over with wealth, people leave their doors unlocked, and I would frequently knock on a back door, before pushing it open and wandering in, shouting a greeting to the inhabitants. I have made my way through the ground floor, and shouted up the stairs, before concluding that there was no one at home. Even so, the house and its contents were open to the world.
However, the more people acquire, the more need they feel to protect it; and the further up the social scale we move, the more burglar alarms we encounter, followed by CCTV cameras, and eventually, gated compounds. We haven’t, thank God, reached the stage of two stories recently reported from the United States: in one, a black teenager knocked on the door of the wrong house, and was shot and wounded by the (white) householder firing through the locked door, whilst in the other, a woman passenger was shot dead from inside a house after her friend inadvertently drove into the wrong driveway.
Do you and I have hospitable hearts? What is your, or my, attitude to the stranger? There is a famous cartoon from decades ago, depicting two men discussing a third. “Who’s he?” “A stranger.” “Heave half a brick at him!” Are attitudes of that kind even remotely familiar?
Last Sunday, at the priestly Jubilee Mass in my old home parish, a bag man wandered into church, and sat there throughout Mass. After Mass, the Deacon took him in to the celebration buffet, and sat with him over a cup of tea and a sticky bun while the man told his life story. I know of an Irish priest based in London who, when someone comes begging at the door, puts on his coat and takes the person to a nearby café, where he buys a meal for both. For many of us, the temptation is to hand out what has been called “bugger off money” to save the trouble of giving time and attention.
Perhaps these visitors are not prophets, holy men, or disciples, as described by Our Lord. In fact, they are more important than that: they are Christ. The First Letter of St. Peter, recalling the mysterious trio who visited Abraham, comments that, in practising hospitality, many “have entertained angels unawares”. More than that, we are entertaining God, as Abraham was.
Our hospitality is a mark of our openness to Christ, of our willingness not to cling to what we have. Something similar lies behind Jesus’ call not to prefer our nearest and dearest to Him. We mustn’t cling to people, because by doing so, we take away their freedom and our own—our freedom to do and to achieve what He wants of us. By apparently preferring others to Christ, we are stifling them and handicapping ourselves. Our lives, like our goods, our time, our hospitality must be available to God, so that He may bring us to perfection.
