"When we love the name of salvation, of our Lord Jesus Christ, and have mercy upon each other, we fulfill all the Law. Through mercy, Abraham was pleased, to host God, and His holy angels.
...When we continue to keep Him, in our inner being, He will make us rich, so we can give to others. We do not ask for, the wealth of this world, but for the salvation of our souls, by calling upon His holy name."
+ Wednesday Watos Psali, Midnight Praises, Coptic Orthodox Church, http://tasbeha.org/hymn_library/view/356
"I am frightened at the possibility of being condemned. Not because I have robbed, or committed adultery, or done something forbidden, but rather for having failed to care for Christ himself in the person of the poor. Servants of Christ, let us then visit Christ! Let us take care of Christ! Let us feed Christ! Let us welcome Christ...in the person of the poor."
+ St Gregory of Nazianzus
"...the human being, the poor show us, is made to exist in relationship. We need one another and not only the hungry need us. Reducing all of us to simple consumers, taxpayers, crushes us all and we all have built sand castles (e.g. financial markets).
To only talk about people including the poor in terms of needs puts out the flame of creativity in all of us....
...Generosity is not about handouts or “noblesse oblige”. It is rather any action that is not immediately at the service of what is useful, or plays into the game of profit or what I can get out of it, but rather generosity is any deed that breathes towards a horizon of truth, of the beautiful, of what is good...
...It is up to communities like St John's and many other humble communities of faith to show that it is possible to be generous, to love without counting the cost, to live the economics of the gospel. It is no longer just about them, it's all of us who need to discover this, before it's too late."
+ Fr Roberto Ubertino, Donors' Dinner Talk June 2012, http://www.stjohnsmission.org/news/
"Welcoming the one stranger is not a duty or a chore, or even less a moral obligation, but rather as St Paul reminds us a blessing because experience has proven that some, in practising hospitality, have entertained angels."
+ Fr Roberto Ubertino, Entertaining Angels - June 17, 2012, http://www.stsilouan.org/priestmusings/entertainingangels.html
"We have to resist the tendency to separate dignity from need. If persons come to us with significant needs it's quite easy, especially in a society that values independence and autonomy, to associate need with a lack of dignity and to slide towards contempt and disrespect. We find ourselves subtly despising people for the help they need. We end up humiliating people while we're trying to help them.
'How easy it is to fill hands while we break hearts' and I think some of you who are involved in ministry have seen that happen. Hospitality helps us remember that respect doesn't have to be drained out of relationships in which one person has substantial needs.
Hospitality can also help us resist the divisions between provider and recipient by recognizing that both are blessed in relationship and resources flow in both directions.
There's also peril in hospitality because it is a fragile practice. Our acts of hospitality do not diminish necessarily our temptations to power, or greed, or ambition. It may allow them to be expressed more subtly but hospitality can be useful to these things. That's what corrupted it in the middle ages and that's why it degenerates just into entertaining. Because hospitality is effective in forging social relationships, because it is such a profound form of human connection it can also be a very powerful vehicle for accomplishing our purposes. And so it can be distorted especially by ambition. And here the danger is that hospitality will be misused by the host.
Every historic period has had its temptations to seek an advantage in offering hospitality. Ours is no different, we have our own version of the ambitious hospitality that Lactantius and Jerome and Chrysostom warned about. It's the entertaining we see in the business world, the carefully planned dinner parties calculated to impress the selected important guests. Even the approaches that Christian institutions offer to cultivate potential large donors, where we're really using hospitality to get something else.
In the church the instrumental orientation sometimes gets re-framed as a question of stewardship. And so we ask 'Well, what will it accomplish if we do this hospitality? how will we know it is effective? what are the results?'
Hospitality is rich with blessing but those benefits come as gifts and we should be wary of turning efforts at hospitality into what Calvin warned was a form of commercial exchange.
Today if churches engage in hospitality substantially there's a tendency to turn it into a strategy, a means to another end. We are extremely goal oriented and concerned that our efforts are demonstratively successful. And so quickly hospitality becomes the latest evangelism approach or the hot new strategy for church growth.
I don't want you to misunderstand me here, hospitality is very effective but if it is only a strategy it's also very short lived. Where people are initially welcomed but then they're dropped because the congregation moves on to something else, or maybe they really haven't counted the cost that's involved in the welcome. When we use hospitality instrumentally it loses its mysterious dimension and hospitality as a way of life is undermined.
There really are few contexts that are better for sharing the Gospel than the setting of warm welcome and people will come to a church that is welcoming. But when we use our occasional hospitality as a tool we distort it. And the people we welcome quickly recognize that they're being used. And then the cynicism about the church's interest in them is palpable and they feel as if they are victims of yet another marketing program or project.
It's hard to resist the tendency to allow Christian hospitality to be reshaped into a powerful blend of pseudo intimacy and commercialization and instrumental thinking...all of which are very characteristic of our time. "
+ Dr Christine Pohl, Practicing Hospitality in Troubled Times, Presented at the Henry Center, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-OZr0dJwHmk @ 55mins
"Henri Nouwen wrote that hospitality is the virtue that makes anxious disciples into powerful witnesses, it makes suspicious owners into generous givers, and it makes close minded sectarians into interested recipients of new ideas and insights. Nouwen reminds us that hospitality requires listening.
He says that to listen is very difficult because it asks of us so much interior stability, that we no longer need to prove ourselves with speeches, arguments, statements and declarations. True listeners no longer have an inner need to make their presence known, they are free to receive, to welcome and to accept.
Listening is much more than allowing another person to talk while waiting for a chance to respond. Listening is paying full attention to others and welcoming them into our very being. The beauty of listening is that those who are listened to start feeling accepted, they start taking their words more seriously, and they discover their own true selves.
Henri Nouwen observes that the purpose of hospitality is not to change people but to offer them space where change can take place. It is not to bring men and women over to our side but to offer freedom not disturbed by dividing lines. It is not to lead our neighbour into a corner where there are no alternatives left...that is the traditional approach of the pharisees.
But as Nouwen says, hospitality is to open a wide spectrum of options for choice and commitment."
+ Most Rev. Monsignor Mark L. Bartchak, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FcdqCTPfos
