13th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Fr. Vinner)
GIVING AND RECEIVING LOVE
My Sisters and Brothers in Christ,
Hudson Taylor was director of the China Inland Mission. Once he was interviewing candidates for the mission field. “Why do you wish to go to foreign mission?” he asked them one after another. “I want to go because Christ has commanded us to go into the entire world and preach the Gospel to every creature,” said one. Another said, “I want to go because millions are perishing without Christ.” Others gave different answers. Then Hudson Taylor said, “All of these motives, however good, will fail you in times of tastings, trials, tribulations, and possible death. There is but one motive that will sustain you in trial and testing; namely, the love of Christ.”
In today’s gospel, Jesus teaches those whom he is sending out as messengers of the Gospel that they must be driven by the love they bear for him, and sustained by the love they receive from others. In other words, preaching the Gospel is not just a question of being a channel of God’s love, for a channel flows only in one direction. It is more like being an electrical conduit which receives current only to give it out, and gives out current only to receive again. The high rate of physical fatigue, mental exhaustion and spiritual dehydration among church ministers has to do with the belief that the minister is there to give care and support to all without a corresponding realization that ministers themselves also need to receive care and support. Jesus tells us that it is a question of loving and being loved, of giving and receiving.
In the first reading we see Elisha is fortunate to find a woman, who not only welcomes him into her home but presses him to stay. Elisha feels so welcome and so much at home that he makes it a point to always stop at her place on his journeys through that town. She feels that this traveler is a holy man and convinces her husband to build a small room so that whenever the stranger came he could rest there. They went out of their way to make the stranger feel at home, sparing no cost or effort and in return the prophet wanted to repay her for her hospitality. He finds out from his servant that she is childless and that her husband is old and so he promises: “This time next year, you will hold a son in your arms.” Her generous hospitality towards the stranger is more than abundantly awarded.
Welcoming someone into our homes and hearts is never an easy thing to do, especially with present day problems, tensions and violence and crime in our streets today. We rather prefer to be safe rather than sorry and do not want to allow anyone into the privacy of our homes. On the other hand we ourselves may have felt the need of hospitality especially if we have moved house, taken up another job or migrated into another country. Given the economic pressures of day to day living and the unstable political climate, thousands of refugees are rendered homeless and have left home and family in search of work, and better prospects.
We ourselves know of people with special needs or people in special circumstances, who are looking out for someone who would make them feel at home. What is our Christian response to this need? Opening our hearts and homes to the other requires faith and brings with it its own reward. The stranger welcomed into our home may become ‘the holy man of God’, not because of his piety or depth of mystical union with God but rather because God often conveys his message for us and his blessings through the people we open our hearts and homes to Hospitality to a fellow human being—even giving a cup of cold water to someone who is thirsty—is inseparable from receiving Christ and the one who sends him to us.
Today Jesus extends his presence and his mission through his disciples, again entailing a crisis of decision. Perhaps it is not so difficult to understand in faith that one receives Christ in receiving those disciples who, by virtue of their office as bishops, are successors of the twelve. This Sunday’s gospel passage, however, also speaks of a disciple who is “one of these little ones” and is in need of a cup of cold water. Like Christ himself such a disciple may not be received as one sent by God. Jesus thereby alerts us to the profound implications of hospitality, even to the least of our brothers and sisters whom he sends as disciples into our lives.
May God Bless you,
Fr.S.Vinner HGN.