The Hospitality of God

Greetings,

In Lent we were aware of the hospitality of God though our willing sacrifices.  In the Easter season we are aware of the hospitality of God through the abundance of the Easter feast.   Always, the hospitality of God comes through the Body of Christ.

I will extol you, O LORD, for you have drawn me up,

and did not let my foes rejoice over me.

O LORD my God, I cried to you for help,

and you have healed me.

O LORD, you brought up my soul from Sheol,

restored me to life from among those gone down to the pit.

                                                                                                                                       Psalm 30:1-3

a man who had fallen among thieves

lay by the roadside on his back

dressed in fifteenth rate ideas

wearing a round jeer for a hat

fate per a somewhat more than less

emancipated evening

had in return for consciousness

endowed him with a changeless grin

were on a dozen staunch and leal

citizens did graze at pause

then fired by hypercivic zeal

sought newer pastures or because

swaddled with a frozen brook

of pinkest vomit out of eyes

which noticed nobody he looked

as if he did not care to rise

one hand did nothing on the vest

its wideflung friend clenched weakly dirt

while the mute trouserfly confessed

a button solemnly inert

brushing from whom the stiffened puke

I put him all into my arms

and staggered banged with terror through

a million billion trillion stars

                                                                                                            e. e. cummings

I saw a stranger today.

I put food for him in the eating-place,

And drink in the drinking-place,

And music in the listening-place.

In the Holy Name of the Trinity

He blessed myself and my house,

My goods and my family.

And the lark said in her warble,

Often, often, often

Goes Christ in the stranger’s guise

O, oft and oft and oft,

Goes Christ in the stranger’s guise.

                                                                                                            Irish rune

Nowhere does the Torah say, Invite your guest to pray;

but it does tell us to offer a guest food, drink and a bed.

                                                                                                            Jewish proverb

And finally, these words from our old friend the other Berrigan brother.

Christ, fowler of street and hedgerow

of cripples and the distempered old

—eyes blind as woodknots,

tongues tight as immigrants—

takes in his gospel net

all the hue and cry of existence.

Heave, of such imperfection,

wary, ravaged, wild?

Yes.  Compel them in.

                                                                                                Daniel Berrigan

Yours & His,

DED