Sunday, July 18, 2010

hospitality and...

One of the people I met this past two weeks, at advanced pastoral studies course in worship at the San Francisco Theological Seminary in San Anselmo, was Pachomius (c. 290-346), an Egyptian of pagan parenthood, possibly a veteran soldier, who became the founder of cenobitic monasticism.

There was once a man named Pachomius, a good and brave man, who had always looked out after the people he loved, his parents, his friends, his unit in the wars, his country.

But he found himself in prison - and there he knew he would rot. For in those pagan days of the Roman Empire, in prison you were not visited, if hungry you were not fed; you were on your own. And you would rot, and you would starve, and you would die.

Pachomius knew what was going to happen.

But then a strange group of people arrived in the prison. They were singing, songs of praise, to 'Christus' - apparently their god.


And they went around, visiting the sick, binding up the wounds of the injured, feeding the hungry, bringing clothing to the exposed - and not to their friends only, but to everybody, new or old, friend or stranger. Everybody was welcome.

And they stayed and they came back and they kept on doing this.

Pachomius knew this was strange behavior.

He wanted to find out more about this 'Christus' and the people who followed him.

And he did.

He became a Christian - and learned what it meant to do more than be good, be more than a friend to your friends, loyal to your family and the people of your own kind.

He learned about Jesus.

Perhaps he heard the words that we know:

"When were you sick or in prison and we visited you? When were you naked and we clothed you? When were you hungry and we fed you?"

"Whenever you did any of these things for these my brethren you did them for me."

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Pachomius, like Alban, was a man of courage, integrity, generosity - and hospitality.

He was a good man. In the eyes of the world he could do no more to acquire merit.

Like Alban, our patron saint, he learned to be more than a good man; he learned faith.

And in faith he grew - beyond the good he grasped the one thing, the one thing that is above all others:

to follow Jesus.

How could he do this? It is something of a mystery - and the mystery is this:

Christ in you, the hope of Glory.

...

Abraham and Sarah had faith, and it was counted to them for righteousness.

Martha was a good woman; her sister 'chose the better part' - it was good to show hospitality, a very good thing; what was the 'one thing' that mattered ultimately?

To sit at the feet of Jesus, to follow him.

What happened to Martha? What did she do, this good woman?

Do we know? What do you think?


At the feet of Jesus,
at the foot of the Cross,
the women who had followed him from Galilee were there.

At the empty tomb,
early in the morning on the first day of the week,
the women who had followed Jesus from Galilee were there.

There was Mary of Magdala, and Salome, and the other Mary, and....






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