The Miracle of Hospitality

Luigi Giussani

Description

In his introduction, Fr. Julián Carrón asks: "Why is hospitality a miracle? It seems like something we should take for granted-opening the door of our home and let­ting someone in should be normal." And yet, he notes, "it is so exceptional that when it happens, everyone is amazed."

In the talks and interviews collected in The Miracle of Hospitality, Fr. Luigi Giussani, founder of the international lay movement Communion and Liberation (CL), delves into the source of this miracle-the free gift we call charity. He writes: "Only if we are aware that we are loved-with clarity or confu­sion, implicitly or explicitly-can we love, which means to em­brace, to welcome within us, and to share."

Fr. Giussani's words were shaped by a long-running dialogue with the Welcoming Families Association, an organization that emerged out of the lived experience of CL and which has for many years promoted foster care and adoption, as well as support for migrants, the elderly, and the disabled. Given the ever-present phenomena of war, mass migration, and the many threats facing millions of children today, the miracle of hospitality is more urgently needed than ever.

Introduction by Julián Carrón

 

To the Welcoming Families Association

 

The Reason for Charity

 

Living Gratuitousness

 

A New Experience of Humanity

 

"Not of Flesh, nor of Blood, but of God Are We Born"

 

Embracing What Is Different

 

The Imitation of Christ

 

Familiarity as the Method of the Mystery

 

 

Appendices

 

The Person, Subject of a Relationship

 

Culture of Life and Culture of Death

 

The Story of a Work

 

Textual Sources

 

Notes

Sujets

• Christian Living
• Social Issues
• Philosophie et théologie
• Catholic Church
• Catholic
• Christianity
• Religion
• Adoption

Informations

• Publié par: Slant Books
• Date de parution: 15 février 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781639821310
• Langue: English

Extrait

The Miracle of Hospitality
 

The Miracle of Hospitality
Luigi Giussani
Introduction by Julián Carrón
Translated by Matthew Henry

The Miracle of Hospitality
Copyright © 2023 Fraternità di comunione e liberazione. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Slant Books P.O. Box 60295 , Seattle, WA 98160 .
Slant Books
P.O. Box 60295
Seattle, WA 98160
www.slantbooks.com
Cataloguing-in-Publication data:
Names: Giussani, Luigi.
Title: The miracle of hospitality.
Description: Seattle, WA: Slant Books, 2023 .
Identifiers: isbn 978-1-63982-130-3 (hardcover) | isbn 978-1-6 3982-129-7 (paperback) | isbn 978-1-639 82-131-0 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Giussani, Luigi. | Hospitality | Hospitality in the Bible | Hospitality--Religious aspects--Christianity.
All Bible quotations are taken from the Revised Standard Version, Catholic Edition.


 
Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.
—Hebrews 13 : 2


 
Introduction
Julián Carrón
WHY IS HOSPITALITY a miracle? It seems like something we should take for granted—opening the door of our home and letting someone in should be normal.
Why, then, does Father Giussani compare this to a miracle? Precisely because it should be the normal experience of every family, and yet it is so exceptional that when it happens everyone is amazed.
We live in a human, cultural, and social context that is the fruit of a long history, one that has witnessed the erosion of our awareness of elementary experience: in particular, the original openness of heart and the perception of reality as positive, as full of promise for our life. In time, things and people became extraneous to us—a distance was introduced. Jean-Paul Sartre’s statement is terrible: “My hands, what are my hands? They are the incommensurable distance that divides me from the world of objects and separates me from them forever.” 1
As Pope Benedict XVI reminded the couples he met with in Ancona in 2011 :
In the confusion everyone is urged to act in an individual, autonomous manner, often solely on the perimeter of the present. The fragmentation of the community fabric is reflected in a relativism that corrodes essential values; the harmony of feelings, of spiritual states and emotions, seems more important than sharing a plan for life. Even basic decisions then become fragile, exposed as they are to the possibility of revocation that is often considered an expression of freedom, whereas in fact it points to the lack of it. 2
Precisely in this context, a family that opens its home to a child or a person in difficulty—as the Italian organization Famiglie per l’Accoglienza 3 does—expanding the horizon of their affections to a “stranger,” has in itself something of the divine that conquers this distance. Father Giussani compares this welcoming to a passage from the Letter to the Hebrews: “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares” (Hebrews 13 : 2 ). And he comments: “They are not just angels: they are more than angels! They are children of God, part of the mystery of the person of Christ. . . . It is like seeing one who goes around by night completely fluorescent. And the people are encouraged . . . seeing and reading what you are living.” 4
Here we see the importance of that original openness of heart that faith reveals in its profundity, which makes an experience possible that would otherwise be unrealizable, especially in an epoch like ours. The promise, in fact, is that the distance described by Sartre can be overcome. And this helps us to understand that an association like Welcoming Families is not the fruit of human imagination—because that distance is unbridgeable for those with limited resources, however generously they may be engaged. It is another type of belonging, more a passivity than an initiative, as Father Giussani says: “We cannot share, which means we cannot put forward our presence as part of the presence of an other, we cannot open our presence to welcome the presence of an other, if first of all we do not feel ourselves welcomed, if we do not feel ourselves loved.” 5
As Benedict XVI told the couples at Ancona: “You may be certain that in every circumstance you are cherished and protected by the love of God, who is our strength.” 6 It is only this profound amazement for something that happens in our life that becomes a condition for us to welcome the other, in imitation of Christ who called everyone “friend,” even Judas the night of the ultimate betrayal, overcoming every distance. It is that profound sympathy which makes Jesus say to Zacchaeus, “Make haste and come down; for I must stay at your house today” (Luke 19 : 5 ). And that infamous man runs home and prepares everything for the unforeseen guest who will revolutionize his life.
Hospitality is the imitation of Christ’s gesture. Every other reason would be either sterile sentimentalism or voluntarism—which the very first difficulties to arise would bring to its knees.
Those who share the gaze with which Christ looks at people and things can enter into the arena, accepting even difficult sacrifices, as inevitably happens to so many who share the life of children. This is a witness to the nature of Christianity: it does not require any titanic force or any particular capacity, because it breaks into life as something unforeseen that enters the “I” and changes it.
It is a thrilling experience to be invited to lunch by a family and see Christ at work while you are at table, through the signs of a humanity that treats everything in a new way, that is not reductionistic, with a charity and a patience that are impossible for humankind on our own. And then there is a joy, even within the difficulties and the everyday misunderstandings, that is already the victory over nothingness and over the banality into which our relationships can fall. “Concretely, there exists no act greater than hospitality: from a radical hospitality, like adoption, to a simple one like offering lunch or shelter to someone passing through town for a night. One of the most beautiful things I see happening among my friends is this connection, this network of families, open to accommodating anyone,” 7 Father Giussani recalled in 1985 .
His dialogues with the Welcoming Families Association are a gift of the Mystery, that shows us a heart that is certain and for this reason capable of embracing anyone, making it easy to see how the memory of Christ is the root of every movement of the “I.”
Hospitality is without measure and without calculation. It is, in fact, the communication of a fullness that upholds our life, the fruit of the unforeseen hospitality we first received, as it was for the Virgin Mary—her “yes” to the announcement of the angel generated the greatest good that the world could desire. Having welcomed the preference of the Mystery in her life, not getting in the way at all, not even protesting about her limits and fragility—as can easily happen to so many of us in front of the choice of God—she became the mother of the Son of God, who for two thousand years has passed through history and reached each of us in the situation where we find ourselves. Will we also have the simplicity of Mary to make room for Him, welcoming Him in the womb of our life?
This is the greatness of the challenge that every family faces, the only challenge that lives up to the stature of our humanity. Father Giussani said: “I have this 'yes’ and that’s it. . . . It would cost nothing more for you than it costs for me. . . . To say ‘yes’ to Jesus . . . because if I did not say ‘yes’ to Jesus, I would not be able to say ‘yes’ to the stars of the sky or the hairs of your head.” 8
This is the deepest reason to say yes to an unknown child who enters our house for a time that we do not determine, because everything is in the hands of God. But a month or a year doesn’t matter: what matters is that each instant of our life together is full of that yes to Him who makes everything and, having made them, preserves them for eternity.
Is there anything more interesting for a man and a woman than this collaboration in the work of the Father, this work of overcoming the emptiness of the world with the strength of a presence? The former Archbishop of Milan Angelo Scola reminds us: “The family is the great path and the first ‘school’ of communion, whose law is the total gift of self. Christians, proposing this path in all its beauty, in spite of their fragility, attempt to witness to men and women of our time, whatever their worldview may be, that the objective desire for the infinite that is at the heart of every experience of love can truly be realized. The family conceived like this is a precious patrimony for the whole of society.” 9
The form of this collaboration in the work of the Father, then, is free from every preconceived scheme, as Father Giussani reminds us in this tremendous passage:
Is being a father or a mother to throw a fetus out of the mother’s womb? No! And if you welcome a fetus made by another woman for two months, four months, five months, and you educate him, you are the mother, in the physiological and in the ontological sense of the term! And if you do this even without actually having that child at home because your husband does not want to, or because you are afraid and you don’t feel called to it, even if you pray to God, in so far as you know a poor child in trouble, mistreated by a family that is not his, and you offer your whole day in the morning saying: “Lord, I offer you my day so that you may help this child,” this is an even fin