Reflection
To be hospitable, you need to accept pluralism as a natural condition in the world. Sometimes hospitality requires that we cross boundaries and dismantle some of the barriers erected in our society to keep “the other” out. Sometimes it means entertaining ideas that might be alien to us. Hospitality and hostility are both derived from the same word root — but they couldn’t be more different. Hospitality is about welcoming all; hostility thrives on insider/outsider conflicts. Hospitality is a good prescription to balance a tendency to be critical of and unaccommodating to others. To be distrustful of the world, to become fearful and paranoid when strangers approach, or to be suspicious of ideas unlike our own shows that we need to increase our tolerance of the various groups in our society and their distinctive lifestyles.
Adapted from Spirituality& Practice
Prayer
May I have an open mind and welcoming heart.
Action
Consider the things that prevent hospitality. Choose specific actions that will be helpful for you. Implement them.
Suggested Reading
Truly I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of my brethren you did it to me.
Matthew 25:40
May the church be the place of God’s mercy and love, where everyone can feel themselves welcomed, loved, forgiven and encouraged to live according to the good life of the Gospel.
Pope Francis
Hospitality is the virtue which allows us to break through the narrowness of our own fears and to open our houses to the stranger, with the intuition that salvation comes to us in the form of a tired traveler. Hospitality makes anxious disciples into powerful witnesses, makes suspicious owners into generous givers, and makes close-minded sectarians into interested recipients of new ideas and insights.
Henri J. M. Nouwen
I welcome every creature of the world with grace.
Hildegard of Bingen
What do I mean “open to God”? I mean… a courageous and confident hospitality expressed in all directions…. I mean an openness which is in the deepest sense a creative and dynamic receptivity — the ability to receive, to accept, to become.
Samuel H. Miller
I believe that God extends to human beings a divine and inexhaustible welcome: the door is always open, the table always set, the arms flung wide, outstretched.
Jane Redmont
Hospitality knows no gender or race.
Danny Meyer
True hospitality is marked by an open response to the dignity of each and every person.
Kathleen Norris,
Hospitality is the practice of God’s welcome by reaching across difference to participate in God’s actions bringing justice and healing to our world in crisis.”
Letty M. Russell