Meeting God in our Welcome
Smelling of raw onions and serrano peppers, the teens plopped on overstuffed couches. Our youth group had spent an hour chopping, dipping, and rolling delicious food for the unhoused guests to enjoy that evening. Bowls of crema, salsa, and made-by-us guacamole lay ready on the table. We were in the parish hall, where family tents were already set up. In the quiet of waiting for enchiladas to bake, my colleague asked the kids, “What does hospitality mean to you?”
Teens described making space for others to feel at home and treating them with dignity and respect. We acknowledged that sometimes hospitality is messy and inconvenient. It often changes us in unexpected ways. Hospitality isn’t just about food. And when we are open, the people we welcome shape us long after they’ve left our presence.
I invite you to consider your experiences of hospitality in this season of gratitude and stewardship. When and where have you been made to feel “at home?” These can be moments as brief as a conversation or as long as a lifelong relationship! When and where have you offered hospitality with an intentional openness to being changed by the other? What did you learn? Take some time this week to share your answers to these questions with someone you trust and listen to their responses, as well.
With the eyes of faith we recognize every act of loving welcome as an encounter with God. In making space for each other and in accepting others’ hospitality, we are joining the Spirit in holy, healing work.
“The paradox of hospitality is that it wants to create emptiness, not a fearful emptiness, but a friendly emptiness where strangers can enter and discover themselves as created free; free to sing their own songs, speak their own languages, dance their own dances; free also to leave and follow their own vocations. Hospitality is not a subtle invitation to adopt the life of the host, but the gift of a chance for the guest to find (their) own.”
~Henri Nouwen, Reaching Out: The Three Movements of the Spiritual Life