Quotes about Hospitality

You need not tell me who you are. This is not my house; it is the house of Christ. It does not ask any comer whether he has a name but whether he has an affliction.

This is not my house; it is the house of Jesus Christ. This door does not demand of him who enters whether he has a name, but whether he has a grief. You suffer, you are hungry and thirsty; you are welcome. And do not thank me; do not say that I receive you in my house. No one is at home here, except the man who needs a refuge. I say to you, who are passing by, that you are much more at home here than I am myself.

I no longer call you servants,…I have called you friends."14 Servants is a "doing" word; friends is a "being" word. What do servants do? They cook, clean, et cetera. A friend, however, is something you are, not something you do. A servant is Martha, a friend is Mary.

Don't invite me if you don't want me.

And in a very special way, as Jesus says in Matthew 25:40, in the least of these, we find Jesus in disguise. Perhaps we are just as likely to encounter God over the dinner table or in the slums or in the streets as in a giant auditorium. Of course, suggesting that God doesn't need these million-dollar megacathedrals is the sort of thing that gets you in big trouble.

There is a place for good food and beautiful art; what matters is who you share it with. What's just as important as what you eat is who you are eating with. One of my favorite sayings these days is "Simple living does not mean ugly living." We can live in ways that are simple and responsible—and beautiful.

Community means that people come together around the table, not just to feed their bodies, but to feed their minds and their relationships.

The spirits have been good enough to let us live here and use the utilities, and we're saying: We know how nice you're being. We appreciate the rain, we appreciate the sun, we appreciate the deer we took. Sorry if we messed up anything. You've gone to a lot of trouble, and we'll try to be good guests.

Hospitality should have no other nature than love.

The word hospitality in the New Testament comes from two Greek words. The first word means love and the second word means strangers. Its a word that means love of strangers.

Congregation is composed of people, who, upon entering a church, leave behind what people on the street name or call them. A church can never be reduced to a place where goods and services are exchanged. It must never be a place where a person is labeled. It can never be a place where gossip is perpetuated. Before anything else, it is a place where a person is named and greeted, whether implicitly or explicitly, in Jesus's name. A place where dignity is conferred.

I'll shower blessings on the pilgrims who come here, and give supper to those who arrive hungry." The devout mind goes back to those years in the wilderness when God gave water from the rock, manna from the ground and quail from the skies, and fashions a hope for abundant, eternal providence.