Hospitality at Home

Facts of Life

At her In the Heart of My Home blog (ElizabethFoss.com), Catholic author and mother Elizabeth Foss wrote, in December, about “Entertaining Angels.”

“When we offer hospitality, we are inspired by charity. Entertaining seeks to impress. Hospitality seeks to minister,” Foss blogged.

“Hospitality is a ministry. As such, it is not bound by time or space. To offer hospitality, you do not have to offer an invitation; you do not even have to be at home, and you certainly do not need to spend days beforehand cooking and cleaning and decorating. To offer hospitality, you have to open your heart to see and meet a need. …

“Seek to comfort and to minister. Look for ways to lighten someone else’s load. In every guest, no matter how cranky, no matter how demanding, see Christ. Open your heart wide; risk allowing people to see your weaknesses. For it is in that very weakness that his power is made perfect.”

Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki of Cologne attends a German Synodal Way assembly on March 9, 2023.

Four German Bishops Resist Push to Install Permanent ‘Synodal Council’

Given the Vatican’s repeated interventions against the German process, the bishops said they would instead look to the Synod of Bishops in Rome. Meanwhile, on Monday, German diocesan bishops approved the statutes for a synodal committee; and there are reports that the synodal committee will meet again in June.

Palestinian Christians celebrate Easter Sunday Mass at Holy Family Church in Gaza City on March 31, amid the ongoing battles Israel and the Hamas militant group.

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‘Why go to Mass on Sundays? It is not enough to answer that it is a precept of the Church. … We Christians need to participate in Sunday Mass because only with the grace of Jesus, with his living presence in us and among us, can we put into practice his commandment, and thus be his credible witnesses.’ —Pope Francis