Byzantine Catholic Family Matters

Renewing the Christian Family VIII

The Monastic Life and the Family - Hospitality

Several years ago when our late son Paul was still alive and had been doing relatively well having been out of the hospital for at least a couple of years (in spite of his mitochondrial disorder) we received a visit from a man who had traveled over one hundred miles to visit with us, meet Paul, and discover how one might live and have hope in the face of a devastating, life-shortening illness. His daughter, little more than one year old, lay in a hospital bed kept alive by a ventilator. The man was on a mission, desperately seeking out help and hope for his young daughter. Caroline and I were present to him. We shared our experience and the importance of our faith, but we mostly listened. Having already nearly lost our son several times, we sorely appreciated the gravity of his young daughter’s situation as well as the terror he and his wife were facing. It was a good visit, and we spoke with him and his wife on the phone a couple of times afterward. His beloved daughter died a short time later. I hope we made some small difference in this man’s life, just as the people who had opened their hearts to us over the years made a difference to us during Paul’s short life and at the time of his death.

This is the essence of Christian hospitality: the opening up of your heart and perhaps even your home to another, particularly one in need. The person in need may be your spouse, your child, and your neighbor down the street. He may be your fellow parishioner, and, yes, even the stranger. Christian hospitality developed in the early Christian monastic communities. In seeking to become closer with God, to become like God, the monk’s life is organized around stability, chastity, poverty and obedience. Out of this life flows the virtue of hospitality. Hospitality for the monk is not quite what hospitality is to most people – hosting your child’s birthday party, a Christmas open house, Thanksgiving dinner, a July Fourth barbeque, or having a friend over for dinner. I do not mean to suggest that there is anything wrong with getting together with family and friends. However, when we restrict our hospitality to good times with family and friends, we run the risk of denying our love and generosity to persons in pain or in need.

Hospitality is not about moving mountains. The key is opening your heart. It may be as simple as listening to your little girl and holding her hand as she tells you that her friend’s father died and is worried that you are going to die too. It may be taking the risk to open your heart to a person who has hurt you (or whom you have hurt) and seek reconciliation. It may be watching the neighbor’s children while she attends to her ailing parent.

Similarly at the parish level, hospitality is not about moving mountains. It is about each and every member of the parish family being welcoming, opening their hearts to people arriving at the door so to speak seeking comfort, salvation, and healing. Ethicist Christine Pohl wrote, "In the church, especially, it is not our table to which welcome people, it is God’s table to which we come as equals" [Making Room: Recovering Hospitality as a Christian Tradition].

Whenever we close ourselves off from others – those in need and the stranger especially – our self-centeredness and individualism takes over. Our families run the risk of becoming self-absorbed individuals leading at best parallel lives. Our parishes run the risk of being no more than ethnic enclaves or social clubs under the guise of Church. Hospitality demands that we see Christ in the other and that we open our hearts.