Eucharist and Hospitality
There is a story told of a woman who was granted a vision of heaven and of hell. She saw hell as endless rows of banquet tables ladened with the choicest food and wine. The very sight and aroma was ecstasy. Then she noticed that all the residents of hell were seated on both sides of the banquet tables, but none were eating or drinking. They all had expressions of great agony, for their arms were all stiff and could not bend and so they could not eat or drink.Next she was swept to the heavens where much to her surprise she found the same scene, except that the great halls of heaven rang with joy and happiness. Coming closer to the banquet tables she noticed the principal difference between heaven and hell. There in heaven the residents used their long, stiff arms to reach across the tables to feed one another.*If we believe in the eternal banquet, then hospitality is what heaven is all about. And if that's what heaven is all about, it should be what the church on earth is all about. And hospitality is all about welcoming, compassion, and humble service.The Word of God spoken through the experience of Elijah invites us to eat and be filled for a journey that might be too long for us. Our God is a gracious and inviting God. Our entire theology as Catholic Christians rests on this tenet. Our God constantly invites, welcomes. When we come to this sacred space -- this space where we believe that our God graces us--we must find evidence of that inviting and welcoming spirit. What do each of us do to make this a welcoming place? How do we invite one another to embrace the gracious spirit of our God through our communal celebration of that love? How would the environment of our worship change if each Sunday we all would introduce ourselves to one person whose name we didn’t know? Further, as a presider I can testify that the greater the participation in the prayers and hymns, the more prayerful the liturgy. Silence during responses, prayers or hymns actually stifles the sense of inclusiveness in the liturgy and impedes hospitality.Ephesians gives us the key to that hospitality: "be kind to one another, compassionate, and mutually forgiving, just as God has forgiven you in Christ." This place where we come to experience God's gracious hospitality can never be a place where judgments of others, jealousy, or prejudice have any part. Such attitudes make our presence sacrilegious. "Be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love...." We have an obligation to be more than physically present at the Eucharist. Our obligation is to mirror the love we come to celebrate. Each one of us must take ownership of the Word we proclaim and the Sacred Meal we share. We must become a sacrament, a living sign, of God's love and compassion. If hospitality is inviting and compassionate, it is also an occasion for humble service. In John's Gospel there is no account of the meal on the night before Jesus died. Jesus does speak at great length of giving his body as bread for the world, but the act which symbolizes that sacrifice is not a meal in John’ Gospel. What John recalls of that night for his community of faith is the washing of feet, the mandatum, the “command”: "As I have done to you, you are to do for one another." A liturgist at a conference I once attended posed this question: What would our Sunday celebration look like if all we had was John's account of the first Eucharist? We would be washing each other's feet each Sunday! Footwashing was an act of hospitality in the time of Jesus, and John wanted his community and us to understand that at the core of Eucharist, "do this in memory of me," was a hospitality rooted in humble service to others. The Eucharist we celebrate here must be rooted in that kind of hospitality.If the Scriptures are to speak to us today they speak to us of being a Eucharistic people who are hospitable: who are inviting, compassionate and willing to be of humble service. That's our challenge as a parish community: to be in our Sunday worship and throughout our week a sacrament of God's gracious hospitality. That's our Sunday obligation. To fail in that obligation may well bring us to the fate of the banquet guests who groaned in agony over a resplendent banquet they could not have. As an inviting, compassionate and humble worshiping congregation, however, we can look forward to a banquet in which all experience the gracious hospitality of the one who gave himself as bread for the life of the world.* This story has been around forever. Source unknown.
