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Every
day of our lives God approaches us in many different disguises, hungry for our
hospitality, hungry for our company and the love of our hearts. We
often complain that God has deserted us, that he doesn’t answer our prayers,
that he doesn’t take pity on our sufferings. Today’s readings tell
us otherwise: they tell us that we are the ones who do not know how to
deal with the fact that, if anything, God has perhaps come too close for
comfort, though maybe we may be looking for him only ways that flatter our
vanity or indulge our self-centeredness. In our readings God
approaches man in ways that are mysterious, disorienting and
challenging. God, the Almighty, presents himself often in forms of
neediness that deceive our logic and that challenge us to lay aside our
haughtiness and laziness in order to become servants of anyone in
need. Indeed, the concept of service is the common thread
of all three readings.
On a
very hot day in the desert, Abraham, no longer young, becomes the servant of
three tired, hungry and thirsty young wayfarers who turn out to be angels and
who together represent the coming to Abraham of God himself. The
Fathers came to see in this scene an early prefigurement of the Blessed
Trinity, and this interpretation has become emblematic in Andrei Rublev’s
famous icon. But Abraham didn’t know whom he was dealing with as he
ran around in the dust and heat trying to prepare the best possible
meal. He thought he was merely showing the hospitality required by
common decency, and yet the whole while he was embracing the living God right
by his tent! In return God blessed the sterile Sarah and gave them
Isaac as a divine reward. Abraham was looking for nothing for
himself, and yet, because of his selfless hospitality, he got an heir—that,
is everything hoped for according to the Jewish mentality.
The
Gospel, in turn, shows us that the greatest—though not the only—way of showing
hospitality to God is … to listen to his Word, to receive what he has
come to give us. Even at the purely human level, one of the most
important aspects of loving is knowing how to receive love. How
could this not be all the truer when we realize that God has, literally, everything to
give us? The problem with Martha is not at all that she was bent on
fulfilling all her duties as head of her household by cooking, serving at
table, and so on. Her problem is expressed clearly in the two little
adjectives “anxious and worried”. Martha has allowed temporal
concerns to take up the whole of her life, to the point of resentment
against her sister Mary. We must be both Martha and Mary, that is,
after giving God what little we may have to offer, we must be wise enough to
stop, become receptive, hospitable in our heart, and offer him our
attention. We must welcome Christ’s active presence within us.
True
hospitality of the heart isn’t blind activism; it should combine service
and receptivity, the willingness to sit down with the guest to give him a
chance to be himself with us, to give us what he has brought specifically for
us. God wants to rule in us as Lord, Teacher and Lover of our souls;
he does not want us to kidnap him in a recruitment effort and turn him into a
convenient laborer for our own projects. We must discern which is
“the better part” of Christian existence, the center, that which will never
pass or grow old: and that is doubtless contemplation, our interior
communion with God. All else must flow from this, and there will not
be any fruitful works of charity if anxiety and busyness disconnect us from the
vital source of Love.
As St.
Paul shows us, our primary service to “the body of Christ, which is the Church”
must consist in “bringing to completion the Word of God”, showing forth the
full mystery of God’s presence among us: we are stewards of this presence, of
“Christ in [us], the hope of glory”. The greatest form of
hospitality, the greatest possible form that service of both God and man can
take in us, is for us to show forth by the quality of our words, deeds and very
presence that we “fill up in our flesh what is lacking in the afflictions of
Christ”. What could be possibly lacking in the perfect sufferings of
Christ? Only this: that I allow them to have their full effect in my
whole person, so that, in a mysterious way, my manner of life will beam forth
Christ’s presence to the world.
At this
holy table this morning, Christ offers us his hospitality. He wants
to nourish us with is Word and Sacrament, that is, with his own substance, that
he may bring risen life, joy and courage to our hearts and that we may then do
the same for others. Let us always eagerly and wisely choose with
Mary this “better part”, which will never be taken from us.
Christ with the Peasants, Fritz von Uhde, c. 1888, oil on panel, Musée d'Orsay, Paris. Homily by Father Simeon.
