16th Sunday in Ordinary Time 2022 - The hospitality of Abraham and Sarah, Martha and Mary

 I have shared before that out in Madison, Ohio, where I grew up, my family ran a business—a banquet facility, party center and catering business. My mother ran the business, hired and fired employees, managed the finances, planned events with clients—business parties and weddings and quinceañeras, while my father managed the kitchen staff and was the head cook, making sure that the prime rib and the manicotti and pork tenderloin and red skinned potatoes, green beans, and cheesy vegetables were all delicious and ready to be served at the precise moment. 

A lot of lessons from growing up in the family business, lessons from my parents about management and hospitality and service play out in my priesthood. Like my mother managing the business—being a pastor requires the ability to coordinate various moving pieces, plan events, and meet people where they are about their ideas. Like my father in that hot kitchen preparing high-quality meals for a variety of palettes for 30 years, being a pastor requires attention to detail, enduring very long hours at times. Both my father and mother had to remain very patient in the face of the occasional belligerent or irrational criticism, not that a pastor ever has to deal with that…but in the end, family business for us was about helping people celebrate—as is the priesthood, celebrating our faith, celebrating the eucharist.

And I was thinking about my family, involved for decades in the hospitality business—feeding all those hundreds of thousands of people over the years, in light of our first reading, where we read of Abraham and Sarah receiving and feeding guests—the hospitality they showed to these strangers.

Now, hospitality in the ancient world was much more than gathering with your family for big events. Travelers often had to rely upon the hospitality of strangers to aid them in their journeys. 

The Mosaic law is explicit about the necessity of hospitality. Strangers, like the poor, widows, and orphans, should be shown special generosity allowed to glean the produce of ones fields. The prophets also reiterate this teaching. Isaiah says, “Share your food with the hungry, and give shelter to the homeless. Give clothes to those who need them, and do not hide from relatives who need your help.” And for those who do not, proverbs offers this warning: “Whoever closes his ear to the cry of the poor will himself call out and not be answered” 

Now of course, hospitality is not always convenient or easy. Abraham and his household, in the first reading, were on a pilgrim journey of their own when those three guests arrived unexpectantly. Hospitality often costs us something, but it fulfills the command to love our neighbor as ourselves.

In receiving the stranger, feeding him, clothing him, being generous with him, we care for the Lord himself. The Lord himself teaches this, incorporating a teaching on hospitality into his description of who will inherit heaven: “Come, O blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me . . .Truly I say to you, as you did it to one of these my brethren, you did it to me”

Hospitality has been long esteemed as a Christian virtue. Written in the 6th century, the rule of St. Benedict outlines how the monks were to treat their guests with hospitality:  “Let all guests who arrive be received like Christ, for He is going to say, “I came as a guest, and you received Me.” The Benedictines became known for their generous hospitality to travelers and pilgrims. St. Benedict writes, “As soon as a guest is announced, therefore, let the Superior or the brethren meet him with all charitable service… In the reception of the poor and of pilgrims. the greatest care and solicitude should be shown, because it is especially in them that Christ is received”

In the Gospel today, in the Lord’s visit to the home of Martha and Mary we see another dimension of hospitality. Martha was very busy in the duties of hospitality ensuring that the Lord was received well. She showed respect and love by the hospitality she offered.

Mary shows us another aspect of hospitality: Mary is praised by the Lord himself for sitting down and listening to him. The Lord has much wisdom to share with us when we listen to him speaking through strangers. To break bread with a stranger you learn how the Lord has been working in their lives, you open their heart to their plights and challenges, and also what keeps them going.

Also, think of how often in the Gospels the Lord is found ministering in the context of hospitality: all those dinners eating with sinners, teaching, correcting, allowed him to meet them where they were with the truth of the Gospel. He shows us that we need to get to know people in order to share truth with them.

When we talk about evangelization, that doesn’t necessarily mean going to door with pamphlets about Catholicism, though we probably need to start doing a bit more of that. Evangelization is also accomplished around table, or at least opening our homes and hearts to others. St. John Paul II writes, “Welcoming our brothers and sisters with care and willingness must not be limited to extraordinary occasions but must become for all believers a habit of service in their daily lives”

As community, as society seem to be crumbling around us, Christians needs to preserve the practice of inviting people around their table—showing them the kindness we would show to Christ. 

Look for an occasion this week to create an opportunity for fellowship, to show hospitality, to invite, to listen to strangers, maybe even invite your pastor over to the house with some fellow parishioners and a fallen away Catholic member or two. Consider how we as a parish are being called to exert extra effort to invite and welcome guests to the table of the Lord.

For Abraham and Sarah, their generosity in showing hospitality became an conduit for miraculous grace to work in their lives—Sarah in her 80s became pregnant. So too Martha and Mary in their hospitality, their service of the Lord, their listening to the Lord, became a conduit to deep intimacy with Him.

So too, when we open our homes, open our lives, open our hearts to the stranger, to the guest—God blesses us, and brings peace and wisdom to our homes, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.

19th Sunday in OT 2019 - Confident Relationship with God

If there is a common theme in today’s scripture readings, it is certainly “faith”. What is faith? In the old baptism ritual, parents were asked, “why have you brought your child to church?” and they would answer “faith”. Faith is certainly why we are here today. So, what is faith?

We can come up with various definitions. The Catechism says, “by faith we are to completely submit our intellect and will to God.” By faith we seek to know and follow the commandments of God and seek to understand the teachings of the Church. Yet, faith is not simply a set of commandments or doctrines, a set of lists to memorize or recite. Faith involves confidence and trust. In fact, one definition of faith I heard recently, is that faith is a “confident relationship with God.” So, when parents bring their children to the baptismal font, why are they bringing the child? They want their child to have a confident relationship with God that leads to everlasting life.

An example of faith held up for us in the scriptures today, from our second reading, the letter to the Hebrews, is Abraham, the father of the Jewish people, whom the Catechism says, is the Father of All Who believe. And three events in Abraham’s life are mentioned as signs of his faith.

First, God calls Abraham when he was 75 years old. Just when Abraham thought that his life was sorta starting to wind down a bit, God called him to begin something new—to pick up from the place where he had settled down with his wife, Sarah and to move to the promised land…at age 75. Not an easy or enviable task, but because Abraham had a confident relationship with God, he found strength for this task with his wife Sarah, to leave their home, leave their comfort, and journey into the unknown.

What is faith? Faith is a relationship with God, that enables us and empowers us, to travel confidently into the unknown, to begin something new, for God’s sake no matter how old we are, to matter how comfortable we’ve grown. We are never too old, or too set in our ways, to begin a new chapter in our faith life, our prayer life, new modes of charitable service.

The second incident in Abraham’s life mentioned by Hebrews occurs 25 years later: Abraham has arrived at the promised land, and God appears to him in a dream and says that he will become the father of a great nation, his descendants would be more numerous than the stars. Abraham and his wife Sarah are now 100 years old, and God says that he will make them more fruitful than anyone in history. Sarah laughed, but Abraham trusted. “By faith, he received power to generate” Hebrews says. And we know Abraham and Sarah gave birth to Isaac. Faith transformed barrenness to fruitfulness.
What is faith? Faith is a relationship with God that brings spiritual fruitfulness, again, no matter how old we are. Where there is only self-concern, faith can bring true charity. Where there is despair faith can bring joy. Where there is anxiety or turmoil, faith can bring peace. Where there is impulsiveness, faith can bring self-control. Where there is harshness, faith can make you gentle. If you let it, if you trust.

The third incident, involves Abraham’s relationship to the surrounding culture. People of faith are often tempted to believe and act just like everyone else around us “out there”, to give-up the ways of God and give-in to the ways of the world.

Well, when Abraham and Sarah moved to the promised land, it was still occupied with many pagan peoples. And one of the grizzly practices of those pagan Canaanites was child-sacrifice. The Canaanites would sacrifice their children to the Canaanite gods. And Abraham, likely because he witnessed the surrounding Canaanites willingness to sacrifice their children, began to imagine that God desired the sacrifice of his own son Isaac. So, we know the story, Abraham and Isaac ascend Mount Moriah, God tells Isaac that God would provide the lamb of sacrifice, Abraham binds Isaac, places Isaac on the altar, and raises the knife, but his hand was stopped by the Angel. God, pleased with Abraham’s willingness to offer the thing he most valued, did not desire the grizzly murder of Isaac. In the fullness of time, God would provide the Lamb, his own Son as the sacrifice for the salvation of the world.

What is faith? Faith is the confident relationship with God that sets us apart from the pagan practices of the world, that moves us to offer what we value most, to trust God more than pressures from the surrounding culture.

How does God want to increase your faith at this moment in your life? On what new journey, new endeavor, new ministry does God want to send you? What area of your life does God want to make more fruitful? And what is he calling you to give-up, perhaps something that has made you a little too much like the surrounding culture?

Speaking of faith, Bishop Robert Barren was in the news this week, lamenting the recent Pew Research report that over two-thirds of Catholics have lost their faith, or never had faith, that Jesus is truly present in the Eucharist—that bread and wine are truly transformed, not just symbolically, but truly, into the flesh and blood of Jesus Christ. If you are one of the two-thirds that do not believe, I invite you, I urge you, to ask the Lord for the gift of faith. For it has been taught from the very beginning that bread and wine are truly transformed at Holy Mass. Pope Francis said recently, “the Eucharist is the spiritual life-blood of the Christian because in receiving it we consume the body of the Lord, whose life transforms us, elevates and empowers us to become like him.”

To provide the opportunity to deepen our faith in the Eucharist, to allow the Eucharist to be a source of blessing and strength for our parish, I am instituting, on the first Friday of each month at 7pm, an hour of exposition of the Blessed Sacrament with devotions and benediction beginning the first Friday of September. Come and pray and adore the Lord. Also, on the second Friday of the month, I will be offering faith formation sessions, an opportunity to come together and study our beautiful faith. Come and Renew and study the faith.

For as we see in the example of Abraham, Faith brings us into a relationship with God where miracles can occur, it brings fruitfulness, and Christ-like self-sacrificial love.

Lord, deepen our faith. Through faith, give us courage, fruitfulness, and the willingness to sacrifice for the sake of the Gospel for the glory of God and salvation of souls.