The Christmas gift of hospitality

By Dr. Jeff Mirus ( bio - articles - email ) | Jan 02, 2024

For people like me (not all that sociable and perennially busy at my desk), it is important to reflect at times on the Christian virtue of hospitality. The Christmas season provides a good opportunity to do just that.

There are some startling examples of hospitality even very early in the Old Testament. For example, Abram insisted on offering rest and refreshment to the three “men” (presumably angels representing the Triune God) who visited him to confirm God’s promise that his wife Sarah would conceive and bear a son. And Lot even offered his own daughters to the lustful crowd outside his door in Sodom who wanted to have their way with the two supposed men (angels) who were visiting him—but of course his visitors pulled Lot safely back inside and effectively barred the door against the restless crowd. (Lot’s hospitality in this case is seen not in his seriously deficient strategic analysis but in his insistence on safeguarding his visitors.)

In any case, it was apparently a firm customary requirement in early Middle Eastern cultures to show hospitality to travelers, and this is illustrated repeatedly in the OT, including in the benefits received by poor widows for their hospitality to prophets such as Elijah and Elisha. Moreover, this customary requirement was elevated by Christ in his frequent emphasis not only on doing good to the poor, who cannot repay, but also on always broadening the invitation to banquets from friends and associates to those of no worldly account. Charity is, I suppose, the other side of the coin of hospitality. But there is something very personal and very special in the exercise of charity through hospitality.

In the family and beyond

One of the great benefits of not only Christmas but even of our pagan culture’s continued willingness to take time off from work and school during the period surrounding Christmas is the opportunity it affords for the exercise of hospitality. For many of us this begins with family—and in some larger extended families that will be enough to keep our hands not only open but full. It is important to allow the hospitality which is so natural to the season to include as many family members as possible, particularly those who are no longer actively practicing their Faith. Gatherings in a good home, a home firmly grounded in Jesus Christ and the remembrances of the Church at this wonderful time of year, serve not only as reminders of love but also as reminders of Love—that is, of Christ Himself and His infinite love and care for all of his brothers and sisters in this frequently estranged world.

Even in our own homes, it is important to recognize Christ as the center of all hospitality, and it is somehow even less embarrassing for the reticent to do this through greetings, grace and carols in a Christmas celebration at home than it might be in other social contexts. The warmth of God’s love and the joy of Jesus Christ ought to be not only present but manifest in our holiday dinners, gatherings and parties. This is a wonderful way to keep fallen-away family members and friends in the spiritual loop, so to speak—giving them that special Christian hospitality to enjoy now and to remember during the more ordinary days of the year. This should not be a time of recrimination but of the reaffirmation of not only our love but Christ’s—but without either apology or minimization of authentic Christian recognition and joy, which ideally will appear not only intentional but effortless.

If children are present, it is also important to enable them to experience some Catholic customs to be remembered fondly from year to year, and perhaps especially the joy of caroling. I am blessed to be part of a family in which this is all orchestrated not only reliably but happily. Indeed, this is a time for family members and visitors alike to absorb the atmosphere of holy happiness—and perhaps to begin to recognize when it may be lacking in their own lives. If the family numbers themselves are not overwhelming, it can be a special blessing to include at least a few others, perhaps some lonely work colleagues or neighbors who will otherwise be left largely to themselves. It is hard for me to go beyond family because, outside of family, I live a fairly solitary life. But that is not true of everybody, and this potential extension of the circle of grace should be kept in mind.

The grace of God is in hospitality

Apart from vocational gifts, perhaps the greatest gifts we can give are gifts of genuinely Christian hospitality. Belloc wrote wisely that “the Grace of God is in Courtesy” (see his poem Courtesy), and I think it is also true that courtesy is the very root of hospitality, beginning with the respect and gratitude with which we treat others in all the moments of life, whether great or small. In the growth of courtesy, hospitality serves as a kind of heartfelt fulfillment, which itself ought to be crowned by the even more exquisite courtesy of the prayers we say for those who have crossed our paths, those we have embraced and entertained, and those for whom we can never do as much as we ought in recognizing them as children of God, yes, even as brothers and sisters in Christ.

In his poem, Belloc describes three pictures on the wall of a monastery: The Annunciation (in which Gabriel is full of courtesy for Mary), The Visitation (in which Mary is full of courtesy for Elizabeth), and The Consolation of God in the birth of Christ (“He was so small you could not see / His large intent of Courtesy”). Again, it is wise to see in courtesy itself the gateway to hospitality, for there can be no hospitable invitation without that extension of genuine respect to those of every age and station—that recognition of the spark of the Divine in others that must be addressed in deference. It is precisely this which St. John Henry Newman recognized as the very soul of the manners of a true gentleman or lady: Not mere convention, but the attentiveness of genuine care.

We may, then, consider courtesy the icebreaker of hospitality, and hospitality the gateway to inclusion in Christ’s family, of which our own families, despite our flaws, must be at once visible portions and representations. I am quite sure that I am the very worst person to be expressing this message and this confidence. But I am nonetheless privileged to experience it anew each year especially when we gather together to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ:

He came to his own home, and his own people received him not. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God; who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; we have beheld his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father…. And from his fulness have we all received, grace upon grace. [Jn 1:11-14,16]

Without fanfare, yet prayerfully and supernaturally in every plan we make, it is precisely this reality that the virtue of hospitality is designed to share. God is with us, in part, so that others may experience Him there.