What can we do to show that the Eucharist is a communal activity? Greeting people at the door is a start. It alerts us to the fact that we are going to do something with others. “Welcome” implies “I am happy that you have come.” The first impression a visitor receives is extremely important. But hospitality is everybody’s ministry. We practice hospitality in choosing where we sit. Do we take the aisle seat and block access to the rest of the pew or chairs? Are those who come after us forced to crawl over us to find a place? What does it say to latecomers when the only open places are way up front? And how do we acknowledge the presence of those who come in and sit next to us? Hospitality is not restricted to the ministers at the church door.
It is also helpful if we think of the first part of the Mass as “gathering rites” rather than “introductory rites” or “entrance rites,” because “gathering” names the purpose of these actions and prayers: “to ensure that the faithful who come together as one establish communion” (G.I.R.M., 46). We exercise the ministry of hospitality when we pick up the service book and sing the gathering hymn. If we are actually doing something together, we should look like it.
We also practice hospitality when we open our minds and hearts to the proclamation of the Scriptures. When we listen to the psalm refrain and repeat it back as best we can, even if the melody is new, we are honing our listening skills and training our ears to hear the word of God. And this word, received in the Holy Spirit, broadens our understanding of whom we must welcome into our parish assembly. The U.S. bishops’ document Built of Living Stones (2001) underlines this idea: “The Gospel requires that particular care be taken to welcome into the Church’s assembly those often discarded by society—the socially and economically marginalized, the elderly, the sick, those with disabilities, and those with special needs” (No. 42). The General Intercessions expand the horizons of our prayer. Understanding the Eucharist as sharing a meal together rather than “receiving Holy Communion” lies at the heart of this communal understanding of the Mass.
Those parishes where the liturgical assembly is a real community must take special care to welcome visitors. A stranger should be able to enter a church and feel perfectly at home. But when you enter a gathering that has a real feeling of community, you may feel out of place unless you are welcomed. I have lived in parishes where we had to be continually reminded to welcome visitors, lest they get the impression that we were some sort of “clique.” The feeling of community was that palpable.
I have found some Catholics who think this whole “welcoming” business is destroying our traditional sense of reverence and replacing it with some folksy, feel-good experience. This is a false conclusion. If you wish to invite a guest into your home, you must have space. You have to “make room.” To invite others into our hearts and our worship, we must make room for them. The enemy of reverence is not hospitality but arrogance. If we wish to worship in an atmosphere of reverence, we must rid our churches, our congregations and our hearts of any superfluous self-importance, pride and ambition that might be filling up our “guest spaces.” We must empty ourselves in order to make room for the other to enter in. This is the difficult part of hospitality.
Arrogance and all that goes with it need to be “sacrificed” at the Eucharist. When we are weighed down with pride and self-importance, it is difficult to mount the cross with Jesus, who “humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross” (Phil 2:8). Emptying ourselves of arrogance is the key to experiencing reverence. At a recent meeting of the North American Academy of Liturgy, the study group of which Iwas a member visited a parish in Harlem for Sunday Eucharist. After Mass a group of parishioners met with us to discuss our experience. One of our group asked the parishioners, “When do you have your deepest experience of prayer? Where in the liturgy do you experience God?” Without hesitation, several of the parishioners replied: “In the welcoming community.” Hospitality is a doorway to transcendence.
The ministry of hospitality that we exercise at the Eucharist is not simply a sales device. It must be the liturgical enactment of the hospitality that permeates our daily living. Hospitality is not an add-on; for the Christian, it is the bottom line: “Then the king will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father. Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, a stranger and you welcomed me’” (Mt 25:34-35).
Thomas Richstatter, O.F.M., is professor of theology at St. Meinrad’s Seminary, St. Meinrad, Ind.
It is also helpful if we think of the first part of the Mass as “gathering rites” rather than “introductory rites” or “entrance rites,” because “gathering” names the purpose of these actions and prayers: “to ensure that the faithful who come together as one establish communion” (G.I.R.M., 46). We exercise the ministry of hospitality when we pick up the service book and sing the gathering hymn. If we are actually doing something together, we should look like it.
We also practice hospitality when we open our minds and hearts to the proclamation of the Scriptures. When we listen to the psalm refrain and repeat it back as best we can, even if the melody is new, we are honing our listening skills and training our ears to hear the word of God. And this word, received in the Holy Spirit, broadens our understanding of whom we must welcome into our parish assembly. The U.S. bishops’ document Built of Living Stones (2001) underlines this idea: “The Gospel requires that particular care be taken to welcome into the Church’s assembly those often discarded by society—the socially and economically marginalized, the elderly, the sick, those with disabilities, and those with special needs” (No. 42). The General Intercessions expand the horizons of our prayer. Understanding the Eucharist as sharing a meal together rather than “receiving Holy Communion” lies at the heart of this communal understanding of the Mass.
Those parishes where the liturgical assembly is a real community must take special care to welcome visitors. A stranger should be able to enter a church and feel perfectly at home. But when you enter a gathering that has a real feeling of community, you may feel out of place unless you are welcomed. I have lived in parishes where we had to be continually reminded to welcome visitors, lest they get the impression that we were some sort of “clique.” The feeling of community was that palpable.
I have found some Catholics who think this whole “welcoming” business is destroying our traditional sense of reverence and replacing it with some folksy, feel-good experience. This is a false conclusion. If you wish to invite a guest into your home, you must have space. You have to “make room.” To invite others into our hearts and our worship, we must make room for them. The enemy of reverence is not hospitality but arrogance. If we wish to worship in an atmosphere of reverence, we must rid our churches, our congregations and our hearts of any superfluous self-importance, pride and ambition that might be filling up our “guest spaces.” We must empty ourselves in order to make room for the other to enter in. This is the difficult part of hospitality.
Arrogance and all that goes with it need to be “sacrificed” at the Eucharist. When we are weighed down with pride and self-importance, it is difficult to mount the cross with Jesus, who “humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross” (Phil 2:8). Emptying ourselves of arrogance is the key to experiencing reverence. At a recent meeting of the North American Academy of Liturgy, the study group of which Iwas a member visited a parish in Harlem for Sunday Eucharist. After Mass a group of parishioners met with us to discuss our experience. One of our group asked the parishioners, “When do you have your deepest experience of prayer? Where in the liturgy do you experience God?” Without hesitation, several of the parishioners replied: “In the welcoming community.” Hospitality is a doorway to transcendence.
The ministry of hospitality that we exercise at the Eucharist is not simply a sales device. It must be the liturgical enactment of the hospitality that permeates our daily living. Hospitality is not an add-on; for the Christian, it is the bottom line: “Then the king will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father. Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, a stranger and you welcomed me’” (Mt 25:34-35).
Thomas Richstatter, O.F.M., is professor of theology at St. Meinrad’s Seminary, St. Meinrad, Ind.
"Christ is always present in his Church, especially in its liturgical celebrations"