Editor’s Note: This is William Griffin’s first post for his new blog, “The Extreme Middle.” He’ll make you laugh and make you think–there’s no one like Bill, as you’ll soon discover.
Hospitality is a virtue, a moral as well as theological virtue. It’s an offshoot, one of the many, of charity. It’s elusive; now you see it, now you don’t. It has boundaries, but they aren’t at all clear. We’re fraught with its presence and distraught by its absence….
Excuse me; there’s someone at the door.
The knock. To answer or not to answer, that’s the knock. Is it nobler to open the door or just to leave it shut? Well, that depends who’s on the other side, doesn’t it? It also depends on how hospitable I am, which is not all that much, and if I can make an act of blind faith that, when I open the door, the knocker won’t knock my block off.
HUNT IN THE WOODS
The knock heard around the world took place in 1853. Jesus was the knocker; it was the middle of the night; he was carrying a lamp; the crown made him look like a king; the halo made him look like a saint. So what was he doing out in the woods knocking on a solid wooden door? And why didn’t the door have a knob or latch on the outside?
William Holman Hunt knew; he’d painted the picture. He was an eccentric, romantic artist, but he had a message to communicate. Hunt called the painting “The Light of the World”; that title was rather grandiose. “Is Anyone Home?” would have been more appropriate for what a curator called a second-rate piece of art, but it communicates like a Rembrandt or a Leonardo.
In prayer it’s the soul that knocks on Jesus’s door, not the other way round; so why is he knocking on the door of the soul? Parenthetically, the risen Jesus had no difficulty with doors, being able to pass through closed ones without mussing a hair. Symbolically, Jesus was just looking for a friendly shoulder to lay his head upon.
Today when I hear knocking, it could be the IRS, UPS, or USPS at the door. It could a girl scout selling cookies or a boy scout trick-or-treating. It could be a freelance roofer or or a tree-pruner looking for work, or just a family wanting permission to harvest the pecans in our backyard. Or it could be somebody I should have offered hospitality to but didn’t, and he’s still mad.
MONASTERIES
Traditionally, monasteries have never turned anyone away. There was always a porter available 24/7 to shelter a pilgrim or feed a pauper. In the fifth century St. Benedict wrote hospitality into his rule. In the fifteenth century Thomas à Kempis, an Augustinian monk, wrote down some rules for his monastery’s provisioners. First, never keep the poor waiting at the gate; second, always have a good word for the down and out; third, don’t worry about the food running out; God will see that it doesn’t.
Benedict and Thomas, as indeed all monks, saw Christ in each other. Was it any surprise that they saw Christ in whoever showed up at the monastery gate? The monks treated each other as though they were invited guests in God’s house. Is it any wonder, then, that they treated the ragged crowd in just the same way?
MY HOSPITALITY
As for me, for eight years I was a member of the Society of Jesus; Jesuits for short. From childhood on I was taught to bow my head at the name of Jesus; St. Paul would have insisted on the knee bow, but he was a crank. Scripture taught me that Jesus would be with us till the end of time, but just where was he to be found? In any number of places. Liturgy taught me that he lived in the Eucharist. Theology taught me that he’d pay a special visit every time I received communion, whether that communion was a physical or spiritual one. For a guy who left with a bang some two thousand years ago, he certainly returns to the scene a lot.
By William Griffin
William Griffin is a writer, editor, and translator living in Alexandria, Louisiana.
