Homily for Thursday, 11 July 2019– Memorial of St. Benedict

Readings of the day: Genesis 44:18-21, 23b-29, 45:1-5; Psalm 105:16-17, 18-19, 20-21; Matthew 10:7-15

Thursday of the 14th Week in Ordinary Time

This homily was given at the Kateri House Women's Residence Chapel, St. Joseph's College, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada.

How do we exercise hospitality in our lives?

When Jesus commissions his disciples in the Gospel reading we hear today from Matthew, he sends them out to accomplish fairly great ministries with fairly little: They are to “cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons.” In doing so, Jesus’ disciples are to set out without many even basic possessions, let alone luxuries: “Take no gold or silver or copper in your belts, no bag for your journey, or two tunics, or sandals, or a staff.”

Not only does Jesus ask his disciples to travel lightly, but he goes on to invite them to live hospitality as essential to their ministry: To “give without payment” as they have “received without payment”; to take what is offered them in each house “and stay there until [they] leave.”

Modeled on Jesus’ invitation to his disciples to exercise hospitality, St. Benedict of Norcia, the sixth-century abbot of Subiaco and then Monte Cassino, Italy, whose feast we celebrate today, developed his Rule of Benedict for the communities of monks he founded. The first lines of the Rule of Benedict urge the monks to listen: “Listen, O my son, to the precepts of your master, and incline the ear of your heart, and cheerfully receive and faithfully execute the admonitions of your loving Father, so that by the toil of obedience you may return to [God], from whom by the sloth of disobedience you have gone away.” In the original Latin of Benedict’s Rule, the commands to “listen” and to “obedience” are derived from the same verb, audire, to hear or to listen. Obedience, ob-audire, in this sense of listening, is the foremost act of hospitality, toward another person or toward God.

Farther on in Benedict’s Rule, St. Benedict devotes a chapter to the proper reception of guests into Benedictine monasteries. “Let all guests who arrive be received as Christ,” St. Benedict writes, “and let due honor be shown to all, especially to those ‘of the household of the faith’ and to wayfarers.”

The Rule of Benedict has become the basis for the rules of many religious orders to this day, both monastic and more active orders, including mine, the Basilian Fathers. The Basilian Way of Life [39] pays homage to the Rule of Benedict when it says that “hospitality is a Christian virtue and a Basilian tradition. We must recognize the Lord not only in strangers and in those in need, but in all those who visit our communities.” The Basilian Customs, the next-most important Basilian document after our Way of Life, says this about hospitality and table fellowship, not only among Basilians but with anybody who visits our communities: “We ought to pay special attention to the art of conversation, both at the table and elsewhere, not allowing ourselves to be satisfied with minimal courtesies, but finding in our conversation support and encouragement.”

In other words, first, may we recognize the Lord in our neighbour, created in God’s image and likeness, and treat our neighbour, whether guest or stranger, with appropriate hospitality. Second, conversation that offers “support and encouragement” is essential to the hospitality to which not only the Rule of St. Benedict, the Basilian Way of Life and Customs, or other religious orders’ rules invite us, but to which Jesus himself invites us, his disciples, through the Gospel of Jesus’ own way of life.