Reading the Spiritual Meadow: The Two Meanings of Hospitality-- Being Kind to Stranger, While Being a Stranger to the World

When we last reflected on the reading of the Spiritual Meadow by our father among the saints John Moschos, he was leading us through the Jordan valley, and teaching us all the stories and recollections that he heard and experienced in those holy places hallowed by the presence of St. John the Baptist and the Lord Jesus Christ Himself.

In the Lavra of Abba Peter, near the Jordan River, just a little distance north of the Dead Sea, John met an elderly man name Nicolas, who had come to live there from his previous monastery of Raithou in Sinai, after it was devastated by the Arabs. He told John that, once, when he was still dwelling at Raithou, he and two other monks were sent on a journey to Upper Egypt. During the journey, they lost their way in the desert and wandered for three days without water, before collapsing in the sand from weariness and thirst. Nicolas, as he and his companions baked under the desert sun, had a vision. There was a beautiful pool of clear water and two people were there, drawing the water with a wooden vessel. Nicolas begged them to give him some of the water. One of the people in the vision wanted to give him a drink, but the other said, “no, let us not give him anything to drink, for he is too easy-going. He does not look after his soul.” The other said, “yes, it is true that he is too pleasure-loving, but he has always been hospitable to strangers.” Then, they gave Nicolas a drink and they also gave water to his companions. Refreshed, they were able to finish their journey and arrive in safety in Upper Egypt.

The virtue that saved Nicolas from death of thirst was the virtue of hospitality. Hospitality is a child of the virtue of charity, a concrete expression of the Lord’s commandment, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

In the Gospel today, the Lord Jesus commands us to love our enemies and to pray for those who persecute us. This may seem like an impossible command, but it is reasoning is unassailable. In hospitality we are kind to strangers, because we recognize that we have been strangers. In the same way, in charity towards our enemies, we recognize that we have one and the same human nature—the image of God. The Lord Jesus tells us, “[God] sends His rain on the just and the unjust.” It is undeniable. Both we and our enemies are both the beneficiaries of the kindness of God. If God is kind to the unjust, to sinners, to His enemies, Who are we to act differently?

Love of strangers and enemies, hospitality and charity, both demand that we be strangers to the world and its ways. The Lord Jesus was profoundly a stranger to the world, and the world was at enmity with Him. On the night that He was betrayed, He prayed, “I pray for them [that is, the Apostles]. I do not pray for the world, but for those whom You have given Me out of the world, for they are Yours.” Unless we are strangers to the world, we will not be able to fulfill His commands. We will not be able to show the kind of love towards strangers and enemies that He has modeled for us. The world teaches us the way of the passions. It teaches us anger, lust, gluttony, pride. Only if we are strangers to these through self-denial, can we be hospitable to Christ our God, Who desires to dwell among us, in us, as He says in the Apocalypse: “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens to Me, I will enter and have supper with him, and he with Me.”