Trappist: Living in the Land of Desire is Michael Downey’s portrait of the community of Trappist monks living The Rule of Saint Benedict at Our Lady of Mepkin Abbey outside Charleston, South Carolina. In his time among the monks, Downey was struck by the monks’ practice of hospitality. Downey writes:
The monastic life entails the lifelong task of making room for the other: another, others, God. It is a space for welcoming the other, a center of hospitality. Hospitality is openness to the unknown, expending the self on the unfamiliar, the stranger, the exile. The monk is called to sustained hospitality to the guest and the stranger both within and outside the community. He does not live for himself but is toward and for the other, toward that which lies beyond himself and his own immediate concerns.
“Monks are homemakers. They create homes for the cultivation of relationships of a specific kind: founded and flourishing in charity. The monk is to make room for those who are different from himself – even for the enemy, recognizing the face of God even and especially there.”
Today the Church honors St. Benedict, the fourth century monk and Abbott who devised the Rule for monasteries. A cornerstone of Benedicts rule was hospitality.
Even today the Monks are known for their guest accommodations, such as the retreat house at the monastery in nearby Berryville, Virginia.
In today’s gospel Jesus speaks of the value of hospitality. He reminds us that we cannot all be prophets, and proclaim the word of God but he or she who gives another the gift of hospitality will “receive no less a reward than the prophet himself”. He also reminds us that we may not all be shining examples of goodness, but he who helps a good man to be good “receives a good man’s reward”. We cannot all teach the child, but there is a “real sense in which we can all serve the child”.
The message of the last part of this gospel is its stress on the simple things. The church will always need its theologians, church historians, great teachers and preachers but the Church will also always need those who make space in their lives for hospitality.
Though not monks, we can adopt the spirit of hospitality and welcome those among us especially the poor the lost and the troubled.