The topic of this morning's conference is hospitality. St. Benedict's monastic life stretched from Subiaco to Monte Cassino. And you could see that, you know, in fact that was the case, but you could see it as a movement from the cave of the heart to the mountaintop to the rayonimo, the radiance of the fullness of his stature in Christ. movement from interiority and depth of heart to becoming that fountain that I talked about the other day. The radiance of monasteries is wide, and surprisingly wide. People seek out monasteries for sacred space and sacred time. I'm preparing for a Franciscan retreat that I'm going to be giving, and I've been reading Sister Ilia Delio, who is a wonderful writer nowadays on Franciscan spirituality.

[01:06]

She studied under the same mentor that I had at Fordham, Newark Cousins. And I've been reading her book on compassion, in the Franciscan spirit. And one whole chapter is on sacred space. It's a wonderful meditation on the importance of sacred space for each one of us and for every person. And I think monasteries provide that for people. We provide sacred space, sacred time. We provide a place of rest and repose and a chance for people to realign their soul. Very important. The monasteries provide environments of ordered, simple beauty that are prayerful. People recognize that right away. They recognize the peace. I've given almost 25, no I forget how many, over 20 California Benedictine experience retreats that are week-long and usually as we move into the week and people are in the rhythm and they love the liturgy and so forth and chanting of the office, they'll say, oh this is wonderful, if I could only bring this home.

[02:19]

And I say to them, well, it's easy to come to a monastery and be a consumer of monasticism. It's harder to be a producer of monasticism. Dorothy Day was asked one time what her favorite scripture passage was. And not surprisingly, it's Matthew 25. I was hungry, you fed me. I was naked, you clothed me. I was in prison, you visited me, and so on. And one of the other lines is, I was a stranger and you gave me welcome. And of course, Dorothy's centers, her soup kitchens, were always called houses of hospitality. poor, broken, the poor, the miserable, you know, people just sort of the rejects of society. And it was a wonderful experience for me to live at the Catholic Worker on the Lower East Side for a whole year.

[03:21]

And it was a wonderful sense of community. I think why it was a wonderful sense of community, these people have no no falsity anymore. They know their failures, their no defenses, they really cared for each other. Sure there were tensions and fights and so forth, differences of opinion, but a tremendous tenderness towards each other. It was quite an experience of community. I'll just tell you a side story. I went up to Fordham one day for class, and I came back on the subway, and I was walking through the Bowery towards the Catholic Worker, and I see one of the old guys from the Catholic Worker. He was in his 80s, Scotty, on the sidewalk, out cold. He had been out drinking. And I thought, do I leave him here, or should I try to get him up? And I was really concerned about him. So it was like pushing up a dead log. And I think you just start at one end and get them up. And one of his arms went around my neck, and two drugs were coming down the street.

[04:24]

And one of them says, sister, I was an altar boy. That doesn't look so good. So I laid Scotty down again. I got some of the young volunteers from the worker to go pick him up. I was a stranger and you gave me welcome. It's so evident in chapter 53 of the Holy Rule that Benedict intends hospitality to be a sacred act, a sacred service. And I think we need to keep reminding ourselves of that because, you know, We're so much into financial expertise nowadays and corporate management and bottom lines and so forth that we can think of ourselves as kind of running a special bed and breakfast. Well, I think we have to be realistic in those realms, but what we provide people is really a sacred act, a sacred service. The rule says, for example, that people should be taken to chapel first and let all honor be shown them.

[05:30]

Of course, some of the elements mentioned in the rule have gone by the wayside, historically, like the washing of feet and the kiss of peace and, you know, the whole community should go out to welcome the person with the abbot of the monastery and so forth. Those things have gone by the wayside, but I think the spirit for, you know, The service of hospitality is a work we all do. And even if we're remotely involved in that, I think the prayer for the guests is very important. The prayer that my father's homily this morning was beautiful in that regard. I was in a French Benedictine community of women a number of years ago, quite a few years ago, and they still kept the habit of washing a person's hands the first meal you're there. It's a nice symbolic gesture of, you know, the connection with the rule and the welcome of the whole community.

[06:31]

So hospitality is doing far more than running our own version of a bed and breakfast place. Hospitality is about the wideness of the heart, truly welcoming. Truly respecting. A woman who was a convert who had come to the monastery a few times said to me, she said, I like coming back here because I feel respected as a person. I like coming back here because I feel really respected as a person. And so everything Father Bernard said in his homily this morning of coming out of, you know, Jesus's high priestly prayer, that the mutual service we're supposed to have for each other, the honor and the friendship, includes the deaths. You know, we've been in winter 32 years now and Many of the people that came even once, you know, can't stay in contact and they become friends. And so that work of hospitality extends beyond the actual visit that they make with us.

[07:39]

And I know that sometimes it can be a chore to be truly welcoming, you know, when you've got your multitasking and a lot to take care of and then you walk across the yard and a guest grabs you and, I've got to talk to you about this, you know. It's easier in big monasteries where you have a porter or a portress and, you know, a person in charge of guests. We at our monastery, we have one person in charge of the guest house, but we all kind of share the work of hospitality and answering the door and welcoming people. In a sense, that's good, but it can be burdensome. So to keep a good attitude can be a challenge sometimes. I'd like to tell you about an experience we had last summer. I got a call one day, a woman calling from Avignon in France, an American who was traveling around France. And she had a dance troupe in Oakland, California.

[08:43]

She was from Oakland, California. And she said, I'm in Avignon. I could tell tension in her voice. I closed the tears. And I thought, what's going on? And I'm very careful about taking people who are psychologically fragile. You just have to be careful about that. But something told me to kind of pursue this question, and she said, I've been through a lot of pain recently. My divorced husband, he died about three months ago, and I helped him towards his death. And I'm really shattered by all of this. And she was very near tears. And I said, well, Why do you want to come to us? And she said, well, I've been feeling emotionally fragile, she used the word. I was on a bus in Avignon, and I was looking for a particular theater to see the performance of a dance group. I was lost, and I said to a lady on the bus, how do I get to such and such a theater? And she said, well, what you need to do is go two blocks down this way, three blocks down that way after the next stop.

[09:51]

It was a cathedral. It wasn't a theater. And she said, I walked into the cathedral, and I saw a large window in front of me, a circle with a bird in it. She didn't even know it was the Holy Spirit. I fell to my knees, and she grew up with almost no religious background at all. I fell to my knees and just broke apart. And an inner voice said to me, you have to go someplace where you can get together. And I said, well, how did you find us? And she said, I'm her brother in Binghamton. And I said, all right. I said, where did you grow up? Windsor, New York. We later found, I said, all right, I figured since she had a brother close by, it would be safe to take her. So I said, okay, you can come. And so she arrived about three days later, stayed for a week. I saw her about two times during the week and she just lightened, you know, and took on more happiness and energy and so forth.

[10:59]

And we found out that she grew up on Route 79, just two miles south of us, towards Pennsylvania. A very extraordinary coincidence. And at the end of the week, she said to me, This experience here at this monastery has brought me back to myself, back to nature, because she said I've lived in a city for so long. It's brought me back to God, and it's brought me back to my community that I grew up in, because Sister Sheila took her to an ecumenical service on the green in the village. Everybody recognized her. I knew the family that she grew up in. And so it was a really wonderful experience of hospitality. I think often we don't know the service that we give to people in hospitality. I was a stranger and you gave me welcome. All guests who arrive are to be received like Christ.

[12:04]

We need to continually remind ourselves of that. Another little story, I was in Jerusalem in the fall of 74. I got a grant to work on my dissertation and I was at a study center called Tantur between Jerusalem and Bethlehem. And I was a junior scholar there and there were senior scholars on sabbaticals and so forth. So one of the things the Institute did for us on the weekends is give archaeological tours, take us to famous sites. Well, one weekend, the site we were going to, two sites, Mar Theodosius up in the Judean wilderness and Marsaba. And Marsabas were St. Samus with roughly a contemporary of St. Benedict. And, okay, so a Polish sister who was studying there, and myself, and the rest of the group were men, climbed aboard the bus, and we went to Mar Theodosius, and then we go straight across the Judean wilderness towards the Dead Sea, and right on the Dead Sea, on the, what river is that?

[13:13]

Kedmon, it's the Kedmon that goes to the Dead Sea. There's the monastery of Marsalis, and St. Silas lived up in the caves, and other monks lived up in the caves on the other side of the river. At any rate, we got there, and the Greek monk who met us at the door let us know that the two sisters had to stand to the side. All the men went into the monastery. Protestants, you know, the Catholics, the Anglicans, everybody was invited. We stayed outside and they closed the doors. They didn't even give us two chairs or a glass of water. We both made a comment to each other about, well, there's hospitality. Well, it turned out to be a very interesting experience of hospitality because, you know, we stood there and we were chatting. It was more than a novel. And we looked out across the sand dunes and we saw a black figure, you know, coming over the sand dunes and then disappearing up the next sand dune. It was just like a Hollywood movie. Only we could see it was a very old Bedouin woman.

[14:19]

And she came up to us, she couldn't speak a word of English or anything else except, you know, Palestinian Arabic. But she kept saying, come with me, by gesture. So we thought, well, this is a little bit risky, but we followed her over sand dunes. She took us to her house, which was a cave. And she made us understand that 26 people lived in that cave, and it was about half the size of this room. A wonderful gesture of hospitality, and so in keeping with the Bedouin tradition of hospitality. She didn't offer us any food, but interesting, Sri took out from some little place in the back a cloth all rolled up and inside were gems, as if she wanted us to see these beautiful gems. That's something she had to share with us. So we graciously thanked her through gesture and took off back to the monastery. So it was a lesson, I think, in welcome and hospitality.

[15:24]

In the ancient world, in tribal societies, hospitality was an essential element of life. It still is in desert areas and, you know, less developed countries and so forth. There's no Motel 6 every 25 miles, you know, and so people need food and shelter and welcome and courtesy. You know, I think that It's so necessary because it's dangerous to be out in the open, you know, robbers and stuff like that. In the movie Lawrence of Arabia, there's a very interesting scene where Lawrence of Arabia is getting accepted by the Bedouins, and he's invited to the Sheikh's tent. I think it was Faisal's tent. And he's seated, and the food is being prepared, and you see it's a lamb being roasted and so forth. And so he's the first one that's served, and they serve him the most precious thing, which is the eye of the lamb.

[16:33]

And he's looking at it, and he thinks, there's only one thing I can do, is eat it. You know, you can't be discourteous to their generosity. So you see him pop it in his mouth and quickly swallow it. But, you know, somebody said, we no longer have hospitality very much in our society. We entertain friends, but we don't have hospitality. And I think that's true. Americans have become so individualized, so insular, that we don't extend hospitality to people. Even in the Renaissance times, I read that in Siena, on the gates of the city, there was always a sign, humanitas, humanity, in Latin, humanitas, which is a sign that strangers are welcome. We won't provide, you know, there was some sort of you know, hospice run by the city or a religious group to offer welcome and shelter and food and so forth for travelers and pilgrims and so on.

[17:43]

Humanitas, humanity. In 1980, Pope John Paul II wrote a letter to prioresses and abbesses and prioresses for the international meeting. And he challenged Benedictine women particularly to provide what he called sacred humanitas, sacred humanitas. And I'd love to write a little book on that. What would it mean to rise to that challenge to provide sacred humanitas? Now, that's not Christian humanism, which I think is very important, but it's a wider sacred humanitas. You know, it's a human welcome, but rooted in the sacred, a sense of you're entertaining angels unaware or, you know, you're entertaining Christ. There's a French monk, Aurelius Dauphin, I think it's Standard, that is his first name, who's written a book about hospitality as a model for inter-religious dialogue.

[18:50]

That welcoming heart is what we need for true inter-religious dialogue. I had the privilege of being at the Gethsemane dialogue in 1996. and the Dalai Lama and about... 20 or 25 Buddhist leaders were there, and then 20 or 25 Benedictine and Cistercian monks and nuns, and it was a dialogue. And it was all done in a monastic context, with prayer and meditation together and so forth. A wonderful experience of the kind of context in which religious dialogue should be done. It wasn't theological debate, it was sharing. A wonderful experience. Dorothy Day's centers are called Houses of Hospitality. And Dorothy wrote occasionally in the Catholic Ortho column that she had, she said, every bishop's residence and every rectory should be a house of hospitality.

[19:58]

Well, you can imagine that didn't go over very well. I was down in New York City in November right after, what was the name of that storm that they had? Standing. Okay. And Father Michael Perry had taken in some people who were homeless because of that. Great model, I think, of being willing to share the accommodations that you have. I think we all could do more to welcome the poor. St. Benedict says that the poor pilgrims and brethren of the faith ought to be particularly welcomed, but how much do we welcome the poor? The poor broken people who maybe have no family and at least once a year would really appreciate a chance for a couple of days in a monastery. In the old days at Windsor, we don't do it so much anymore, but in the beginning, 10 or 15 years, we welcomed for Thanksgiving people in Binghamton who we know who were, as I said, poor, broken people who had no family and no place to go.

[21:11]

And maybe only accommodating another 8, 10 people, but it was a way of sharing and hospitality and being family for them for a few hours. It's not surprising that Benedict made hospitality a centerpiece of his rule because it's clearly part of the gospel. Extending love and compassion, as I talked about last night, is about extending that very practical fear of a good atmosphere, simple good food, a caring way of dealing with people, and so on. Isaac the Syrian said, as your prayer deepens, so does your compassion. As your prayer deepens, so does your compassion. He goes on to talk about, makes you compassionate towards all the people in the world, it makes you compassionate towards the suffering of animals, and he says, even serpents, and that struck me when I read it, because I don't care about serpents very much, they're fine at a distance, but, you know, to be conscious, you know, it's a very deep sense of the wideness of the heart, of that extending of care and compassion.

[22:29]

The Jesuit John Morris wrote this prayer. Mighty God, father of all, compassionate God, mother of all, bless every person I have met, every face I have seen, every voice I have heard, especially those most dear. Bless every city, town, and street that I have known. Bless every sight I have seen. Every sound I have heard. Every object I have touched. In some mysterious way, these have all fashioned my life. All that I am, I have received. Great God, bless the world. And I think we have moments of awakening, you know, of our solidarity, our unity with humanity. It's a kind of famous experience that Burton had, the Fourth and Walnut experience. We went into Louisville one day and suddenly on the street corner, you know, he saw the light of God on everybody's face and he just felt a tremendous solidarity with ordinary people.

[23:42]

I think it was breaking out of his old kind of monastic, what he thought was his monastic conditioning, you know, being separate from the world and that the world could contaminate you and so forth. So this was a striking breakthrough for him. I was at Gethsemane. My first trip to Gethsemane Abbey was in 1995. And I got there one afternoon, so the next morning I went to Mattinson Lodge. And after Lodge, I thought, sun is just going to come up pretty soon. I'll go out to the cemetery and see if I can find Thomas Merton's grave. And I realized it was the 50th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima, and it was August 6th. And so I got to Merton's grave. You know, it just finally got light enough so I could read the names, and I found James Fox, and I knew he's right next to him, one side or the other. I found Merton's grave.

[24:43]

And I thought, absolutely auspicious moment for me to be at Merton's grave, 50th anniversary of Hiroshima. And, you know, August 6th, the Feast of the Transfiguration. So, one of the high points in my life, I think, because my early monastic vocation was certainly very much influenced by Thomas Linton. All right, we'll talk about prayer and meditation and contemplation this afternoon, so this evening. By the way, this is the book by Nirmut Olmusu. In the beginning was The Spirit, Science, Religion, and Indigenous Spirituality. As I said, it's not an easy book to read, especially when you get to the science, unless you have a science background. But it's really a kind of frontier looking at a theology of the Holy Spirit. And I think it's got a lot to offer.

[25:36]

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