Manna House was quiet when
I arrived Tuesday morning to start the coffee. There was not even one guest
waiting for me at the gate. I entered the house, plugged in the coffee, and sat
down in the kitchen for forty minutes of reading, reflecting, and praying. I
have done the same thing for some twelve years now.
I first read the “Saint of the Day” from Robert Ellsberg’s fine book, “All
Saints: Daily Reflections on Saints, Prophets, and Witnesses for Our Time.”
Then I turn to my “Benedictine Daily Prayer: A Short Breviary” for the daily
psalms with scripture and prayers. Somedays this rich feast of saints and
psalms leads me to write. On other days, I simply sit in silence, listening to
the birds, the passing traffic, the arrival of guests, and letting all of that
abide in the Word of God I have just read and prayed over.
I am convinced that hospitality cannot last without returning faithfully to
prayer. There is a mysticism inherent to Christian hospitality. The mysticism
is in the vision of guests as Christ. This mystic vision forms the practice of
hospitality as sacramental. The guests are outward signs of the invisible
reality of the presence of Christ. In the guests, Christ resides, just as much
as Christ resides in the Eucharistic bread and wine shared on a Sunday morning.
The guests are sacred, and this reality is grounded in Christ’s own institution
of this sacrament of hospitality, “Whatever you do unto the least of these you
do unto me” (Matthew 25:31-46).
Without prayer I would find it hard to maintain the mystical vision of seeing
Christ in our guests. The temptation I struggle with first of all is to lapse
into seeing our guests as the larger society sees them: as despicable,
disgusting, and dangerous. This temptation casts the guests as beggars to whom
I can give any old “charity” because “beggars can’t be choosy.” In this
temptation, guests are seen as instance of the larger species called “the poor”
who are not to be trusted, who are to be rigorously tested to make sure they
are not getting anything for “free,” who are to be forced to jump through
myriad bureaucratic hoops to get a few scraps from the master’s table. This is
the view of the poor urged these days by Tennessee Governor Haslam and his
henchmen. They are happily proposing yet further requirements for the poor to
meet in order to receive a few measly dollars of government support.
But as I point that finger at politicians and others, four fingers also point
back at me. I know how easy it is to slip into viewing a guest with suspicion,
or wishing that a particular guest would just go away and never come back, or
being short tempered with a guest who is consistently demanding. “Christ comes
in the stranger’s guise” I learned long ago at the Open Door Community in
Atlanta (now in Baltimore). But I can easily lapse into seeing guests as just
plain strange.
Without prayer and the mystic vision of Christ in the guests there is another
temptation I easily slip into: trying to save the guests who come. Like the
“charity” of the “beggars can’t be choosy” variety, this second temptation is
another form of control. In this case, the control I seek is that of the souls
of the guests. I seek to remodel guests into my image, rather than respecting that
they are already made in the image of God. Hospitality is not about reforming
people, it is about sharing together God’s redemptive grace known in love.
Father Gregory Boyle puts it this way, “The intentionality of what we do is
really not about trying to change folks or save them, but to savor and cherish
them.”
To welcome guests in a way that savors and cherishes
them, welcoming them in God’s grace as I am welcomed by them in God’s grace, I
need to pray to nourish the mystic vision of the guests as Christ. I need to
make the time and the space in which God’s gracious hospitality receives me in
my strangeness, my brokenness. In this prayer, I am joined to Christ, welcomed
as Christ by God. In prayer I am able to welcome guests knowing, how in them,
God has welcomed me.
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