Part of what makes hospitality important is not just how we can serve other people, but what God gives us through them when we welcome them. St. Benedict talked about receiving every guest “like Christ,” especially the poor and pilgrims “because it is especially in them that Christ is received.” We welcome others as Christ because he has first welcomed us and made us holy. Even in the common and ordinary places in our lives, we share the very holiness of God.
This message is adapted from “What’s Holy?” written by Karen Burgess-Cassler in the October 2001 issue of Lutheran Woman Today (now Gather) magazine.