Hospitality

Hospitality is a key part of who we are as Christians.  A  valued friend rightly observed that all this talk of love throughout the church just seems meaninbgless.  How true!  Reason why?  Love is primarily a verb, not a noun.  I am told by missionaries I have met from Papua New Guinea that, in some local dialects, there is no name for words like love or compassion.  They are all verbs.  It is not what we keep saying that matters.  It is what we do.    

I keep referring to the great line supposedly from St Francis of Assisi - 

"Preach always.  Use words only when necessary."

As we approach Holy Week, we see love at the centre of all that Jesus does and ultimately suffers.  Without love, Jesus'  actions make no sense to human reason.  Love gives the rightful context to all he did and suffered in reaching out to humanity.  Love gives the meaning and deepens his human actions to show forth God, the divine living in the midst of our reality.  

So being together matters.  Human solidarity matters.  Hospitlaity is ever the key to who we are.   Henri Nouwen, Catholic priest and spiritual writer of latter 20th century, reflected: 

It is "obligatory for Christians to offer an open and hospitable space where strangers can cast off their strangeness and become our fellow human beings."