for May 5
Tuesday of the Fourth Week of Easter

The weather was lovely on Saturday afternoon, and there was a steady parade of masked and appropriately separated people out for a stroll. But I must confess, I watched them with a bit of resentment. “Where were you,” I asked silently, “on all my damp, cold and grey afternoon walks? These streets belong to me!” Clearly, the practice of hospitality remains something of a personal struggle!

Perhaps that is why I am so drawn to Barnabas in today’s passage from Acts. Barnabas is sent from Jerusalem to check out the new believers in Antioch. These Greek people had not been scarred or scattered by Stephen’s persecution. They had not lived through the shattering experience of Jesus’ death and astonishment of his resurrection. They were newcomers, outsiders to the disciples’ world of faith.

I could certainly understand if Barnabas met them with a doubtful “yeah, right.” Instead, when Barnabas arrived, “he saw the grace of God and rejoiced.”

What a remarkable act of hospitality! This Easter season, I’ve been struck over and over by the hospitality on display in the gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles. The disciples who walked with Jesus toward Emmaus did not hesitate to invite him in for the night. In the part of Peter’s speech in Acts that we read on this past Sunday, he pivots instantly from reminding the crowd about “this Jesus who you crucified” to inviting them to receive the Spirit through baptism in the same name. These stories follow the consistent practice of hospitality throughout Luke’s account of Jesus ministry: preaching to, healing, and even dining with all kinds of ‘outsiders.’ Even so, Barnabas’s hospitality seems to me to extend even further: he moves past caring for those in need among us, past welcoming the repentant, to embracing those who have traveled to God along paths that are entirely different from his own.

This is a lesson the Christian community has spent centuries learning. Just think about how long it took us to get from the centuries-old conviction that ‘outside the Church there is no salvation’ to Vatican II’s recognition of ‘the life of grace’ and ‘spiritual and moral truth’ in other faith traditions.

Perhaps hospitality is on my mind because it is so hard to practice while sheltering in place, when I can’t invite a friend over for dinner or greet our community at the door as we gather at the table of the Eucharist. At the same time, the pandemic continually demonstrates how our health and survival depend on our hospitality to each other. On a simple and local level, we must trust each other to maintain good hygiene and physical distancing. OSJ’s Faith, Food & Friends (like many charitable efforts) continues to adapt in order to keep feeding hungry guests under challenging circumstances. But Barnabas’s example challenges us to think about expanding the circles of our hospitality even further: as we re-open and re-create our politics, our economy, our worship, how will we make sure that all are safely welcome at the table—whether that is the dinner table, the conference table where decisions are made, or the table of the Lord?

We have a long and challenging way to go—as a church and as a nation—in making sure that no one is left out or left behind. It will require openness not only to people in need, but also to people whom we dislike and with whom we disagree across the political aisle, and even with people completely outside our experience, with whom we find nothing in common. In the first reading today, Barnabas sets an example for us. Perhaps that is why the reading ends with the words, “it was in Antioch that the disciples were first called Christians.” It is in our practice of hospitality that we will truly find our identity as followers of Christ.
—BJ Brown

Today’s readings can be found at the US Conference of Catholic Bishops website.