Today is primary election day! There were many volunteers at my local polling center. They were assuredly free of agenda other than creating a safe and welcoming place for me and many others to vote. As I left, I was thanked for my service and given a sticker! Did I just experience a bit of hospitality?
From The Rule of St Benedict:
As our lives and faith progress, the heart expands and with the sweetness of love we move down the path of God’s commandments. Never departing from his guidance…we patiently share in Christ’s passion, so we may eventually enter into the Kingdom of God.
“All guests who present themselves are to be welcomed as Christ, for he himself will say: ‘I was a stranger and you welcomed me.’”
The Rule of St. Benedict 53:1
“Once a guest has been announced, the superior and the community are to meet the guest with all the courtesy and love.”
The Rule of St. Benedict 53:3
“Great care and concern are to be shown in receiving poor people and pilgrims, because in them more particularly Christ is received…”
The Rule of St. Benedict 53:15
Benedict’s life as we know it:
Benedict (c. 480 – c. 547) is known as the founder of the western Christian monastic movement. Perhaps most well known for his “Rule”, a guideline for monks living in community. His “Rule” became one of the most influential framework in western Christendom and is still used in monasteries and convents today. There is little written about Benedict’s life. Rather we have a spiritual portrait of his gentle and disciplined life given to us by Pope Gregory in his Dialogues . As a young man, Benedict left Rome and became a hermit for three years living in a cave above the lake near Subiaco (today known as Affile), some 40 miles from Rome. During these years, Benedict matured, and was invited to become the abbot of a monastery left without leadership. Benedict agreed, but the experiment failed with the monks trying to poison him. He then returned to a life lived in solitude, but many were drawn to learn from his character and perceived holiness. As they came, Benedict built them monasteries, 12 in total each housing 12 monks. With each of these, he gave his “Rule”, the manner by which each person was to live and each house was to run.
Benedict’s Messages:
Hospitality to the stranger
Gratitude
Devotion to God
Obedience
Keeping Silence –silence is an expression of his humility.
Humility
Prayer known almost entirely as Lectio Divina – God is more interested in the purity of our hearts than our words. Prayers should be short and pure
There is no spirituality separate from the “rest of life”
Work of the community (the community must be self supporting)
Benedictine Spirituality:
It seeks to fill the empty and heal the broken
It is attention and awareness
It is reading and praying the scriptures, particularly the Gospels
Listening is the key – to the Gospels, the Rule, one another and the world around us.
From Benedict we are called to serve one another in love. The monastic image is that we are all travelers – all a little lost – and all looking for Rest. Someone once said that the opposite of cruelty is not simply freedom from the cruel relationship, it is hospitality. (Homan and Pratt, page 5) Hospitality puts an end to injustice. According to Benedict, hospitality is a spiritual practice.
“All guests who present themselves are to be welcomed as Christ, for he himself will say: ‘I was a stranger and you welcomed me.’”
The Rule of St. Benedict 53:1
“Once a guest has been announced, the superior and the community are to meet the guest with all the courtesy and love.”
The Rule of St. Benedict 53:3
“Great care and concern are to be shown in receiving poor people and pilgrims, because in them more particularly Christ is received…”
The Rule of St. Benedict 53:15
This was a hospitality offered during historically violent times during the fall of the Roman Empire. Homan and Pratt write, “Monastic hospitality creates sacred space where the guest is free to be alone, to enter silence, to pray and rest. No one is compelled to fill up the guest’s spare time or set an agenda for him or her. Hospitality is living openhanded.” Benedict instructs us to have an open heart, to present ourselves in a stance of availability and to have a curious seeking for presence of God which is all around us.
For today: Practice the discipline of hospitality. Notice where you were welcomed and where you were welcoming. Notice the absence of hospitality.
Resources:
Pope Gregory, Dialogues, Book Two, 593.
Homan, Daniel and Pratt, Lonni Collins; Radical Hospitality, Benedict’s Way of Love, Parcelette, Press, Massachuetts, 2002.
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