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34 ˜ A Work of Hospitality, 1982–2002
is the political expression of the eucharistic vision. Hospitality expresses the love
of table companionship. By hospitality we are drawn into the Mystical Body of
Christ.
Ed Loring, my partner, the love of my life, is known from time to time to
adopt a certain refrain that he repeats again and again. Last year’s refrain, which
we heard several times, was “Justice is important, but supper is essential.” Without
supper, without relationship, without love, without table companionship,
justice can become a program that we do to other people. So justice is important,
even crucial. We hope to give our lives to the justice struggle; but supper
is essential. What we must do, what we are graced and gifted to be able to do,
is to sit down and to eat together, to open our doors, our homes, our hearts, and
our very selves to the needs of others.
Dorothy Day found her home in the church, her home at the table. She
knew that the works of mercy and hospitality are the best antidotes to the empty,
despairing acquisitiveness of our lives in twentieth-century America. A friend
and volunteer in our community, Horace Tribble, prays every day for an “attitude
of gratitude.” That is what we are given with the table companionship
which brings us to open ourselves in hospitality.
The works of mercy and hospitality are important, not just in and of themselves,
but in a particular way in our times as a social and political expression.
There needs to be a public character to our work of hospitality. It must be done
in the open so that it is seen, so that everyone can remember that it is possible
to love and welcome each other.
All we hear is how to buy the next mechanism to protect your home and
your family and your property and your car, whether it’s a lock on the steering
wheel, or an alarm system, or whatever. All we hear is that we should protect
ourselves from our neighbors because they are scary, and they are out to hurt us
and take from us. Hospitality, practiced publicly, says that even in 1997 we can
welcome one another in love and in care. In our hearts, we need to open our
own doors. We need to confront our own racism, our own misogyny, our own
class hatred. As we welcome our sisters and brothers, we learn how to take on
these battles within ourselves.
And finally, table companionship and the eucharistic vision bring us to
community. When we find the holy in what is ordinary, when we share what is
ordinary in love, we become companions. Companions are those who share
bread, from the Latin roots com (with) and panis (bread). Companions on the
journey are those who eat together and share the bread.
Bread, of course, is the most ordinary of foods; the staff of life. When we
share bread, it becomes, in the midst of the community of faith, manna, the
bread of heaven. And the sharing of bread creates community—where we can
practice confession and forgiveness, where we can be formed to “practice the
presence of God,” to renounce privilege, and to depend on the Mystical Body