The Welcome
There
are communities where this ministry does not need to be
implemented, for everyone knows one another and each one
finds a place as easily, if I may dare this comparison,
as the ox in his stable. In these cases the community is
created at the same moment that it congregates.
In
other communities the welcome is absolutely necessary, especially
if it is a question of strangers, of poor, or simply of
timid people. The Didascalia of the Apostles (which
is a type of liturgical book of common law drafted in Syria
in the third century) gives this advice to the bishop:
If
a poor man or a poor woman comes, whether they are from
your own parish or from another, above all if they are
advanced in years, and if there is no room for them, make
a place for them, O bishop, with all your heart, even
if you yourself have to sit on the ground,
You
must not make any distinction between persons, if you
wish your ministry to be pleasing before God.
There
is little doubt that arrangements could be made in our assemblies
to keep the bishop from sitting on the ground, but the teaching
remains. And it is splendid! There are in all Christian
hearts of the usual guests, should occupy the first places.
These are "the poor, the crippled, the blind, the lame"
of the Gospel (Luke 14:21). Forgotten through the disfavor
of this world, they are the privileged in the heart of Jesus.
They have a right to preferential treatment.
Sometimes
the welcome is so important that it is the purpose for which
the community might be created. Let me quote the following
case. There was a community of cloistered Sisters who, evening
and morning, celebrated the liturgical prayer of Vespers
and lauds. Some Christians "assisted" there. Without
seeing any human face, they heard virginal voices coming
from behind a wall, through a drape. One day the Sisters
decided to remodel their chapel. The knocked down the wall
of separation and replaced it with an altar which became
the center of prayer -- thus gathering together the Sisters
and the faithful. Now, each time a Christian in search of
prayer enters the chapel, a little Sister, like a busy bee,
runs up, offers a breviary, opens it to the right page and,
with heaven in her smile, say, "The psalm of the Office
is right here!" At once Sisters and faithful became
an evangelical community of praise and prayer, the community
of which it is said: "The multitude of believers had
only one heart and one soul" (Acts 4:32).
