April 4, 1968 was a beautiful spring day in Lexington, Kentucky. After dinner I took a walk from my dorm over to Gratz Park, just across from campus. I wanted to be out in the bright, warm air—and I had a problem I needed to solve.
The Spring Quarter was only a couple of weeks old. I was enrolled in Introduction to Education, the first course in my major. As part of that class, we were to serve as volunteers in local elementary schools. I was to go to my assigned school the next morning. But there was a problem: It was an all Black school in an all Black neighborhood and Martin Luther King had been shot that morning. Should I go or not?
I sat by the fountain in the park to ponder and pray. As I did, I noticed three African-American boys of perhaps 9-10 years old playing across the park. I wondered about them. While I had been an arm chair activist for civil rights through high school, I lived in an all white world. I began to wonder: what do their homes look like? What do they like to do? What are their parents thinking and feeling right now? And, I asked God, “Do I go to Head Start in the morning or not?”
Then I noticed them poking and giggling as boys sometimes do and looking at me. Were they wondering about me? Suddenly, all three ran straight toward me. One bent down and kissed me on the forehead, then ran like the wind down Third Street.
I had been too surprised to do anything. I sat there until the coolness of dusk sent me back to my dorm. I didn’t know what to make of it, except, since the child kissed me, I took it to mean that I should walk into the school the next morning.
And so I did. And all was well. The hospitality of the child became the hospitality of a community.
At the time, I thought God answered my prayer of the moment to solve the problem of the day. Looking back, God changed the direction of my life. I went from arm-chair activist to spending the next fifty years (always safe, always welcomed) with people on the cusp of hard times in the world: integration, rural poverty, abortion, distressed families, distressed couples, and, more recently, the carebound. With a little boy’s kiss (doubtless done on a dare), the Holy Spirit sent me in a new direction and formed much of my life.
Holy Spirit Hospitality for Paul and His Companions
In Saturday’s reading Paul received direction from the Holy Spirit to take the Gospel to mainland Europe—to Macedonia. He and some companions set sail and soon came to Philippi. They were now in territory without enough Jews to have a synagogue, but there was a habit for Jews in such situations to meet on the Sabbath to worship by a stream. While Gentiles had been coming to “the Way” for several years, the primary evangelization strategy remained to start with the Jews in a community. So Paul and his fellow travelers went looking for Jews. They found some women, and Paul preached to them. Then, “one of them, a woman named Lydia, a dealer in purple cloth, from the city of Thyatira, a worshiper of God, listened, and the Lord opened her heart to pay attention to what Paul was saying. After she and her household had been baptized, she offered us an invitation, ‘If you consider me a believer in the Lord, come and stay at my home,’ and she prevailed on us.”
It was the kiss of hospitality of a stranger in a strange land that formed the foundation for Christianizing Europe. As we will discover in tomorrow’s reading from Acts, Paul soon got into trouble in Philippi and was escorted out of town, but the bulwark was planted. He returned to Philippi on his third missionary journey and always felt very close to the Philippian church.
The generous gift of one person’s hospitality did for Paul and Christianity what a child’s kiss did for me.
Holy Spirit Hospitality and the Fallen Away
The Gospel continues from Jesus’ Farewell Address in John on Holy Thursday. It is a few verses after Sunday’s Gospel with its “Greater love has no man than this…I no longer call you servants, but friends…you did not choose me; I chose you.” In those few verses the lectionary skips, Jesus says in effect, “If the world hates you, know that it has hated me first.” He is contrasting his own way of love with the ways of power and struggle that mark “the world.”
Jesus says something very important here: “I have told you this so that you may not fall away.” Fall away–I always used to wonder why people called those who were baptized Catholic but no longer practicing “fallen away Catholics.” This verse is why. John uses the term in his Gospel.
We know from alarming statistics from multiple sources that LOTS of Christians are “falling away.” Lots of Catholics are falling away. If the Holy Spirit and Christ says, “You did not choose me; I chose you,” how come it is that people fall away?
I am reading the Word on Fire book by Brandon Vogt, Return! How to Draw Your Child Back to the Church.” Here is information from its opening page of text:
“Reliable data shows that half (50% exactly) of young Americans who were raised Catholic no longer call themselves Catholic today…But that 50% statistic only concerns religious identification, not practice…Researchers from Notre Dame found that when we gauge young people by that more stringent criteria, the number sinks to shocking lows: just 7% of young people raised in the Church still actively practice their faith today, meaning they still attend Mass weekly, pray a few times a week, and say their faith is “extremely” or “very” important to them.” (Vogt, p 3)
Jesus’ Call through Hospitality
Does Jesus no longer call these youth to himself? Does he no longer choose them? The Gospel today and all through these last days of the Easter season says clearly, “NO!”
Jesus laid down his life just as much for the “Nones” and “fallen away” of religious identification as he laid it down for disciples and apostles. I was not a “none” or “fallen away” Christian on April 4, 1968. I was not actively involved in a church—mostly because I tried several in Lexington and none had a place where I fit. I eventually found an Episcopal Church near campus—and I continued to worship at my home church when I came home to Frankfort. I was still praying…that was what led me to Gratz Park that spring evening so God could use some little boys’ daring to turn my life to where God wanted it to go.
God called to me by answering my prayer. He met me where I was and drew me (very gradually) closer. My Lydia was an unnamed child who most likely had no idea what he was doing. God called me where he could, using who he could.
Our world is a religious Macedonia. We all know people we love who have “fallen away.” Today, let’s pray for hospitality to meet them where they are and call them…back. To kiss them on the forehead. We all know people of faith. Today, let’s pray God gives them the gift of hospitality to prevail on the strangers in their lives and welcome them in.
NOTE: Group zoom discussions of the Pontifical Council for the New Evangelization’s Directory for Catechesis (published in 2020) will begin at 11 am US Eastern Daylight time, Saturday, May 22, and 1 pm US Eastern Daylight time, Sunday, May 23. The meetings will continue through the months ahead on the 4th Saturday and the 4th Sunday of the month. Those who have already contacted me with their interest should have already received an email from me on Sunday, May 9. I don’t want to leave anyone interested out, so please contact me at mary@skillswork.org if you did not get an email on Sunday or if you remain interested. There is room for 3-4 more people in each group.
Prayer:
Holy Spirit, may You be always welcome here. Give us your gifts of hospitality—offered and received—from Christ.
