Christ in the guest...

Today we finish Chapter 53 of the Rule of Saint Benedict: “The Reception of Guests.” Benedict’s opening command is startling in its directness: “All guests who present themselves are to be welcomed as Christ.”

It is easy to say, “Love your neighbor. Welcome the stranger.” But the true openness of our hearts is revealed only when the stranger actually appears—unexpected, unfamiliar, perhaps inconvenient—and places himself or herself within the mercy of our welcome.

Here Benedictine hospitality approaches the spiritual wisdom expressed in namaste: I bow before the sacred presence within you. Ram Dass repeatedly taught that beneath our separate identities lies a deeper unity. We are distinct persons, yet we belong to one another; another’s suffering is no longer merely their suffering but suffering in which we, too, participate. From that recognition arises what he called a “spontaneous generosity of the heart.”

Benedict gives this intuition a distinctly Christian depth. We do not merely welcome the stranger because Christ commands us to be kind. We welcome the stranger because Christ has chosen to be encountered there. Christ is not simply remembered while the guest is served; Christ is adored and welcomed in the guest.

Yet Benedict also insists upon balance. The community must not destroy its own order, prayer, identity, or capacity to serve in its effort to meet every need. Hospitality is not frantic self-erasure. We cannot offer the guest a peace we no longer possess. We cannot provide spiritual shelter if we have allowed the inner monastery of our own lives to collapse.

The discipline, then, is to remain both open and rooted: open enough to receive Christ in the person who comes to us, and rooted enough to offer that person something genuine.

We cannot do everything. But we can remain present. We can listen. We can make room. We can offer what is ours to give.

And what we can do, we will do—with humble hearts, with open hands, and with the prayer:

so help us God...

while all the while remembering that balance does not limit hospitality; it preserves our capacity to practice it faithfully.