Radical acceptance....

Chapter 61 speaks to the way the monastery is to treat monastic visitors.  Benedict’s concern is not merely that visitors avoid disruption. Benedict actually invites the abbot to consider whether God may have sent the visitor to teach. That is an extraordinary statement about humility. The stranger is not simply someone whom we tolerate or serve; the stranger may become the bearer of truth.

There is something very ancient here. The Desert Fathers repeatedly warn against becoming so certain of our own spiritual progress that we can no longer be taught. Abba Moses and Abba Poemen return again and again to the necessity of listening before judging. Cassian likewise understood discernment as something developed in conversation rather than possessed privately. Benedict stands within that tradition: wisdom cannot flourish in a closed room.  Hospitality requires a willingness not merely to receive another person, but to allow ourselves to be changed by the encounter.

Benedict does not construct a monastery for people who have completed the spiritual journey. He constructs what he famously calls a school for the Lord’s service. A school assumes that everyone is still learning. The abbot is learning. The senior monastic is learning. The newcomer is learning. And occasionally the person arriving at the gate may be the teacher God has sent.

We are called to learn and to teach at every moment of our lives—and surely the arrival of a stranger offers an opportunity for both. Wisdom, as Sister Joan reminds us, flows in both directions. We are called to open ourselves to the wisdom of others, to value the opportunity to have our assumptions examined, and never to close ourselves against the possibility of challenge.

There is something wonderfully unsettling here. The visitor may see what those who have lived within the monastery for years can no longer see. Hospitality, then, is more than making room at the table. It is making room within ourselves for a truth we do not already possess.

The ancients understood this well. The Desert Fathers repeatedly warned against believing that spiritual maturity meant having nothing more to learn. Cassian placed discernment within conversation and community. Benedict follows them in creating not a community of the perfected, but a school for the Lord’s service—a place where everyone remains both teacher and student.

Once again, Sister Joan reminds us that Benedictine spirituality does not expect perfection. Benedict—and, I believe, the living God—asks instead for our best efforts, our humility, and our continuing willingness to be formed.

Sometimes the person standing at the door has come seeking wisdom—and sometimes God has sent that person carrying wisdom for us..