A little over a year ago on a Sunday evening in October, I returned home to discover police cars and that familiar yellow tape with the words, “POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS” surrounding the perimeter of the house next door. It wasn’t long until I discovered that its residents were the victims of a double murder. In the first instance, I was struck and disheartened by the occurrence of violence in such close proximity to a place where I reside and where God dwells in the tabernacle of our Church. As I continued to ponder those juxtapositions it also occurred to me that this was the first time I became aware of those men’s existence, which only intensified my dismay. In addition to the disrespect and destruction of human life, my own absent mindedness and de-sensitivity towards the presence of those men compounded my grief. How could I become so blind and oblivious to their presence?

An answer didn’t come until I noticed another nearby and neglected object that I’d passed over for months, the book of collected interviews and talks by Fr. Giussani titled The Miracle of Hospitality. In the Introduction, Fr. Julián Carrón asks, “Why is hospitality a miracle? It seems like something we should take for granted — opening the door of our home and letting someone in should be normal. Why, then, does Fr. Giussani compare this to a miracle? Precisely because it should be the normal experience of every family, and yet it is so exceptional that when it happens everyone is amazed.” Often, the miracle of Christmas is attributed to God’s condescension to man or the Virgin conceiving and giving birth, and rightfully so, but the miracle of openness and embrace towards the mystery of the other is just as remarkable! Something miraculous happened to Mary, Joseph, the shepherds, and the Magi, who despite their own fears and the threats of others moved beyond their respective safe spaces into uncharted territory. No person would act this way without a great grace operating to close the distance between their limited capacity and the overwhelming gift and mystery God was revealing to them in the Christ Child.

Fr. Giussani says: “Concretely, there exists no act greater than hospitality: from a radical hospitality, like adoption, to a simple one like offering lunch or shelter to someone passing through town for a night. One of the most beautiful things I see happening among my friends is this connection, this network of families, open to accommodating anyone,” Hospitality is without measure and without calculation. It is, in fact, this “overshadowing” of our own measure and calculation that we see the dawn of a new world, a new creation.

Fr. Giussani reminds us in this tremendous passage: “Is being a father or a mother to throw a fetus out of the mother’s womb? No! And if you welcome a fetus made by another woman for two months, four months, five months, and you educate him, you are the mother, in the physiological and in the ontological sense of the term! And if you do this even without actually having that child at home because your husband does not want to, or because you are afraid and you don’t feel called to it, even if you pray to God, in so far as you know a poor child in trouble, mistreated by a family that is not his, and you offer your whole day in the morning saying: ‘Lord, I offer you my day so that you may help this child,’ this is an even finer form of motherhood, more ‘genetic’ than any other maternity” (The Miracle of Hospitality, 9).

Let us pray that this miracle of hospitality happens in us this Christmas, so this gaze towards others becomes normative in us. So much so that everyone will be amazed and give glory to God!

Fr. Christopher, Evansville, IN