16th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Readings of the day: Genesis 18:1-10a; Psalm 15:2-3, 3-4, 5; Colossians 1:24-28; Luke 10:38-42
This homily was given at the Monastery of the Carmel of St. Joseph near Spruce Grove, AB, Canada.
What is hospitality? What would be the best image we could form in our minds of the perfect host?
Our readings today present us with several images of hospitality; with several hosts. We hear in Genesis of the visit by “three men” to Abraham and Sarah at “the oaks of Mamre.” Abraham shows himself to be a gracious and even quite humorous host. He says to the three men, “Let me bring a little bread.” I imagine Abraham with a slight smirk on his face as he enters the tent to ask Sarah and his servant not to make only “a little bread” but a magnificent feast of “cakes… curds and milk and the calf that he had prepared.” Maybe Abraham thought, “These three visitors are in for a big surprise. They do not know the feast I have in store for them”!
At the end of this feast at Mamre, one of the servants says to Abraham, “I will surely return to you in due season, and your wife Sarah shall have a son.” Might Abraham have thought at this point, “Wait a minute!? I have heard this promise of a son before. What a joke! Sarah and I are way too old to have a child”!
We know that Abraham had not always been the best host. God had made this promise of a child before to Abraham and Sarah, and they had dared to laugh at God and his far-fetched promise. Now, as he hosts his three guests “by the oaks of Mamre,” we see that Abraham is beginning to master the art of hospitality with a bit of humour. And just as the three men are about to leave, they deliver God’s announcement to Abraham that, from this point, in her womb Sarah has become the host to God’s last laugh at the expense of Abraham and Sarah: She is now pregnant with Isaac, whose name means “he who laughs.” One does not simply laugh at God and get away without consequences!
This would be far from the last or most direct time in which God would enter our world; in which God would teach us something about hospitality; in which God would go so far as to become human like us, to share in our life, our death, our sorrows yet also our joys, our tears and, I am sure, even our laughter. God has revealed himself to us in this utmost way in the person of Jesus Christ. Now we as Church are hosts to Jesus Christ; to God in our world. How do we go about hosting God in our world; revealing God to our world today?
The episode of Abraham with his three guests at Mamre is perhaps most famously depicted in the Russian Andrei Roublev’s fifteenth century icon called “The Trinity” or “The Hospitality of Abraham.” I do not dare to explain the sublime symbolism of this icon, which I do not understand well: Which angelic figure represents which person of the Trinity; why in some cases the angels’ wings overlap and in other cases do not; the significance of the chalice form of the space among the three figures and the wine-filled chalice on the table around which they are gathered; what the meaning is of the angels’ clothing, of the house in the upper right and of the tree at top centre… I would just as soon laugh at God as try to decipher Roublev’s “Trinity.”
I will only say this about the Most Holy Trinity: In the Trinity we have the ultimate revelation of hospitality; of the love among Father, Son, and Holy Spirit such that there is mysteriously distinction yet no division among the three persons of our one God. In the Trinity there is even more perfect hospitality; more perfect love than the hospitality and love shown by Abraham to his three guests at Mamre.
Yet I think there are simpler images of hospitality and of love, with humour, than Roublev’s “Trinity” or than Abraham’s feast with his guests at Mamre. I think of two images in my mind of great hospitality, one from my experience of being on pilgrimage to the Holy Land and the other from the history of my religious order, the Congregation of St. Basil or Basilians.
Three summers ago I was on a Basilian Peace and Justice Pilgrimage to the Holy Land. We were in the Palestinian territories of Bethlehem, Hebron, East Jerusalem, Jericho, Qumran, and the Dead Sea, south toward the Bedouin lands of the Negev desert, and elsewhere. It was the beginning of the Muslim month of fasting by day, Ramadan. In several of the homes in which we stopped, we were offered tea and sometimes small sweets. The hosts, if they were devout Muslims, would not partake of the food and drink they offered us. At the same time as we on pilgrimage felt for them, we were moved by some of the most profound hospitality we had ever experienced.
From our Basilian history I recall the story of our ten founding priests, who ran a clandestine minor seminary on a hill near Annonay, in the foothills of the French Alps, in the wake of the French Revolution. From time to time the Revolutionary troops would stop by our minor seminary to inspect us, to ensure we were not doing anything religious. One advantage of the hilltop placement of the minor seminary was that our founding confrères could see the troops approaching from a long distance. Our priests had enough time to prepare for their arrival by setting out the best French bread and wine their meagre resources could buy. The troops would go about their “inspection,” wining and dining with these priests-in-disguise until, suffice it to say, they went home more than full and satisfied, leaving our first Basilians and the minor seminary they served to survive another day.
The hospitality of our one God in three persons was alive and well in the meeting of Abraham with his guests at Mamre; alive and well in the Holy Land; alive and well among our early Basilians in Annonay. And our God of hospitality is alive, well, and present here now. Mysteriously, here in Carmelite community in this monastery, united with your Carmelite sisters and brothers throughout the world and all religious and the entire Church, particularly in this Eucharistic celebration, we are both the guests and the hosts in this house of God.
Yet in trying to take in this mystery we may try to do too much, so that we become less-than-ideally present to God; to God’s hospitality; to God’s love among us. And so Jesus offers us a gentle caution through our Gospel account of the encounter among Jesus, Mary, and Martha. I think we do well not to try to smooth over Jesus’ admonition of Martha who, Luke’s Gospel says, “was distracted by her many tasks.” At the same time, Mary is fully attentive to Jesus, sitting at his feet and listening “to what he was saying,” taking the posture of a disciple of the time. Jesus says to Martha, “Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.”
Would we not expect Jesus to give Martha more credit for welcoming “him into her home”; for serving him and Mary at table; maybe for caring for their other household, material needs? And yet Jesus sides with Mary over Martha! Why?
Somehow Mary, in sitting “at the Lord’s feet” and listening to him, was more hospitable to Jesus than was Martha, who was left “to do all the work by” herself. How can this be? Hospitality can take many forms. Sometimes hospitality means to “do… the work”; to serve at table; to expend energy serving our sisters and brothers. This is the “Martha” form of hospitality shown rightly by Abraham at Mamre; by our Palestinian Muslim hosts during our Holy Land pilgrimage; by the first Basilians to the Revolutionary troops in Annonay; often by us in religious life. But then sometimes the “Mary” form of hospitality is most appropriate: Simply listen, quietly but actively; be present; learn from our Lord and from one another.
The right form of hospitality for the moment will be a constant process of discernment. Yet this discernment; this hospitality is an essential part of our calling as Christians; as a people gathered here in celebration; as a people of God who is love; who is hospitality in person, always present to us.
