When I noticed four years ago that Jesus had spoken with
shocking force about the importance of welcoming strangers (do so and meet my
Father or don’t and go to hell), I was baffled. Where did that come from? So I
spent some months exploring the Old Testament to understand the teaching about
welcoming strangers before Jesus.
The Old Testament teaching was another shock: it is
abundant, clear, and forceful. To miss the teaching about hospitality, you have
to miss or mangle: Abraham, Moses, Elijah, the Prophets, the Babylonian Exile. (See
“Sign of the Crossing” and “21 Stranger Claims in the Old Testament,” Amazon or
Kindle.) Welcome strangers, because – remember! – you too once were a stranger
in a strange land! But a detail: hospitality in the Old Testament was a
national responsibility.
If it was so abundant in the Old Testament, where was it in
the New? So I returned to the New Testament, with the lessons from the Old
Testament fresh in my mind. It’s there and vibrant, and definitely not isolated
in Matthew 25: welcome strangers or make you own eternal arrangements. Two slight
changes: since the Jews were strangers in their own land, under Roman
occupation, Jesus did not talk about “strangers” versus “citizens,” but rather
about “neighbors.” And second, he emphasized personal responsibility, rather
than national responsibility. (See “The Persistent Other: Strangers and
Neighbors,” Amazon or Kindle.)
If hospitality is central in the life and teaching of
Abraham, Moses, the Prophets and Jesus, it must show up in the teaching of the
Church. Is it there? Indeed! But there is a third pattern of hospitality. In
the Old Testament, hospitality was principally a national responsibility, and
in the New Testament it was principally a personal responsibility. In the early
Church (early and medieval, up to Aquinas), the pattern was principally
ecclesial. That is, it was clerics, especially monks, who offered hospitality.
And although Aquinas taught clearly that sins of omission regarding the six
precepts of the Jesus (feed the hungry, clothe the naked, welcome strangers,
etc) were mortally sinful, these grave obligations were generally fulfilled by
delegation. Most people, most of the time, supported monasteries or parishes,
which in turn cared for the needy including strangers.
It is tremendously freeing to see these three patterns. They
are not absolute, of course; they overlap. But if there are three patterns,
there can be a fourth. Which makes it easy to deal with a common bit of
confusion in our time. Today, many good people are certain that caring for the
needy (such as strangers) is a matter of personal charity. They assert as if it
were Gospel that the State cannot care for the needy properly, that hospitality
is a matter for individuals or the church. Additionally, often, the same people
make a related assertion, that hospitality is a matter of generosity, not a
matter of justice. I think that what is happening here is that people get stuck
on the New Testament model, and think that promoting any other model is an
attack on the purity of the teaching and example of Jesus.
Wow. I don’t want to argue with Jesus. But the fact is, I
don’t have to: Moses and Jesus and St Benedict were all determined to offer
hospitality, but they went about it in slightly different ways. I’m not arguing
with Jesus when I try to implement his teaching by imitating the practice of
Moses or Benedict! Hospitality is a personal and a national and an ecclesial
responsibility – all three.
A fourth pattern of response emerged with Pope Leo XIII. He
taught that there are some problems (like labor relations) that cannot be
understood properly on a personal level, nor within church structures, nor by individual
nations. Some problems are caused by global changes, and must be dealt with
globally. It is unfortunate that in our time some bureaucrats aiming for a
global perspective saw fit to meddle in national or local issues – telling the
French how to make cheese, for example. But despite such foolish abuses, it
remains true that there are some problems that require a global perspective and
a global solution. The issues that can be addressed personally or locally or
nationally or globally include: labor relations, international trade, famine,
disease, war, poverty, migration, and others.
1.
Old Testament, Moses: national
2.
New Testament, Jesus: personal
3.
early Church, St. Benedict: ecclesial
4.
modern world, Leo XIII and Vatican II: global
A detail of immense importance in a global response to
global issues is it demands cooperation with other people – including people of
different faiths, different beliefs, different cultures, different ways,
including people with whom we may have serious disagreements about many important
issues.
Since Leo XIII, and then more assertively since Vatican II
spoke about the role of the Church in the Modern world, the Church has seen fit
to address the moral dimensions of global issues. But a small group of protesters
have claimed that when the Church addresses international issues, the Church is
drifting (or galloping) into Socialism and Communism and Satanism.
Here’s an oddity about the people who are bound and determined to stick
to the personal model. If you have only one model, instead of four (or more),
there are tools that you may not be able to use (or even imagine??) And if you
reduce the tools that you are ready to use, you are far more likely to find that
you face problems you can’t solve. If you stick to a small toolset, what do you
do about large issues? You decide to do whatever small thing you can do, and
then turn the rest over to God. So pious practices don’t just accompany works
of mercy and justice: sometimes, acts of piety replace work for justice. And
the oddity goes farther: pious practices, cut loose from their roots in faith,
can replace genuine prayerful obedience to the Lord.
Take immigration, for example. If an individual will not
cooperate with leftists from Latin America nor Muslims from the Middle East,
what he or she can do is reduced. It’s not possible to think about how to help
65 million refugees and displaced persons, if you rely on the charity of a few
million people.
So what happens? If you are unaware of the work of Moses and
Benedict, and you are determined to follow Jesus in every way (growing a beard
and wearing a robe, and serving people one by one ONLY), then you respond to the
needs of refugees with personal trivia. You can’t help millions, or even
thousands – so don’t try! Do your bit, and pray. (Your bit: the story of the
widow’s mite is about giving your heart, not about giving a penny. And praying:
the Rosary is not about your determination to persuade a deaf and distant God,
but about your determination to listen, like Mary.)
And here’s another oddity. The New Testament approach is
based on the story that Jesus told about the Good Samaritan (a stranger,
serving another stranger). The heart of that story is, you start by getting
inside the experience of the person in need, as well as you can. But if you
refuse to deal with global issues, you can’t get inside the experience of a
Syrian refugee. If you refuse to use the models and tools of a national
approach or an ecclesial approach or a global approach, and you insist on a
personal model ONLY, then you will fail promptly with the personal model also.
You can’t get into the experience of a Syrian refugee without a global
perspective. So you can’t take the first step in the only model you have.
Bottom line. If you say, I will serve the way Jesus did it,
one on one, and no other way, then you will fail to help globally and nationally
and ecclesially – and personally too. It turns out that if you insist on ignoring
Leo’s way, in this century, you can’t do things Jesus’ way.
If you want to imitate the way Jesus talked about the service
of the Samaritan on the road to Jericho, then you have to be willing to take
the road to Jericho. And Jericho is a Muslim town.
