The hospitality of Abraham and Sarah
– icons by Peter Pearson which grace the sisters’ dining room

In preparing some thoughts on hospitality to share with our Benedictine Women of Madison Board, I came across an article Sister Joanne Kollasch wrote in 1984 for a meeting of the American Benedictine Academy. She includes a quote from a conference by the late Demetrius Dumm, OSB, a monk and Scripture scholar from St. Vincent Archabbey, Latrobe, PA. It sent my thinking about hospitality in a new direction. Here is what Demetrius Dumm said:

In Scripture, the entertaining of guests and the entertaining of strangers is the entertaining of mystery; this is to make room for that which is not known, for that which is potentially threatening for the future, ultimately for God. The greatest stranger is the future. Primary characteristics of anyone with authentic faith is their attitude toward the future. Not because it is so promising but because it is from God. God gives us the future. The trademark of the monastic witness is a positive attitude about the future.

“The greatest stranger is the future.” This is the line that caught my attention. It adds another layer to a Benedictine understanding of hospitality. It also provides an intriguing and life-giving way to think about the future. With all that is happening in the world, some days the future seems quite intimidating. The future is certainly always an unknown mystery.

It hadn’t occurred to me that entertaining the stranger was a practice that opens me to entertain the future, but of course, that is exactly what happens in the biblical stories of entertaining strangers. Abraham and Sarah provide a meal for three guests who come in from the desert one afternoon and Abraham and Sarah’s future opens up with the promise of a son.

Pharaoh’s daughter welcomes the stranger as a Hebrew baby boy when she draws Moses out of the water and decides to raise him. With that act of hospitality the future of the Hebrew people (as well as the Egyptians) changes.

Of course, the ultimate act of receiving a stranger is humanity receiving Jesus as God incarnate. Whenever and wherever people have received him, their lives and futures are changed. In calling forth this act of hospitality God provides the opening for newness, change, challenge and growth in human life.

Novices and novice directors gathered in one group, including Lynne Smith (back row, 2nd from right), Paz Vital (front row, left) and Denise West (front row, right)

At the Novice and Director’s Institute that novices Paz Vital, Denise West and I attended in May, each of the novices was asked to make a presentation about their communities. One of the items they were to address was some community plans for the future.  As Paz and Denise prepared their presentation, we had a conversation together in the sisters’ community about how we all saw the future. Mary David and Joanne, who have the most experience among us of welcoming the future, talked about how our community has moved into the future through welcoming and listening to others.

They shared their experience of receiving the Lutheran missionaries for seventeen summers, praying with them, eating with them, talking together and sharing life those years. Through this and other experiences, Mary David and Joanne were stretched. Their hearts were changed. This became one of the experiences that led to their openness to welcome women of any Christian denomination into our community making our community the first ecumenical Benedictine women’s community in North America. The Spirit led them into the future through their exercise of hospitality and the monastic practice of conversatio – fidelity to the monastic way of life and openness to change.

Mary David and Joanne told other stories of welcoming immigrants from India, Vietnam, Guatemala, China and welcoming Missionary Benedictine sisters from many countries. Their hospitality went deep, beyond just providing food and shelter. It extended to opening their community living space and their personal lives to these strangers who brought blessings from the Spirit. Through this opening, their future took a turn in ways they could not have foretold when they joined the community fifty and sixty years ago.

When Paz and Denise gave their presentation and spoke about the community’s future, they said, “We don’t know what the future holds for our community, but we know how we will get there:

• Listen and dialogue with people of faith from all different backgrounds
• Maintain a commitment to prayer and excellence in liturgy
• Change with the times and respond to the needs of the world
• Continue to work for justice and a reverence and care for all creation
• Seek help in leadership; we can’t do it alone!”

Joan Chittister, OSB, has written that if we live the present well, we will be prepared for the future. So I am encouraged to renew my practice of hospitality with an openness to what God is doing among our community of communities that will open up a future I don’t have to control because I can trust God will lead us as God has done in the past.

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The question never fails to pulls me up short, hesitating. In the uncomfortable silence that ensues, I wrestle internally to come up with an accurate response. My first profession was over 9 months ago, so the answer is technically yes. But the truth is more complex. The question touches an emerging part of my identity that is still feeling its way into the world. I struggle to introduce myself as “Sister Rosy” without pinching myself in disbelief. Whose life is this?  What’s in a name?

The Sisters of Holy Wisdom Monstery after Rosy’s first profession. L-R, Sisters Joanne Kollasch, Rosy Kandathil, Mary David Walgenbach and Lynne Smith

First profession marks an important transition from the period of novitiate to the committed life of a sister.  There is a formal ceremony before friends and family, promises are exchanged before a community and there’s a public declaration in the act.  But it is also an in-between. Although I am not yet fully professed, I am seriously committed for a period of years to live the Benedictine promises of obedience, stability and conversion to the monastic way of life in this monastery.

First profession is a landmark moment, but it isn’t the destination. If everything is working right, discernment continues alongside the community as I daily grow into my identity as a sister, integrating the monastery’s vision, values and gifts, its network of relationships, traditions and stories into my own. Formation and incorporation of a new member into an established community is a slow, deliberate process that takes time.

I have heard friends talk about the vaguely surreal moment after their marriage ceremony when they are first referred to as Mr. and Mrs. So-and-So, or after the birth of a child when they hear themselves called mother or father. Initially, being called a spouse or parent provokes a jolt of emotions: shock, delight, amazement, fear, anxiety. That tiny shift in moniker communicates a seismic shift in identity, responsibilities and relationship.

Sister Rosy continues to take her turn working in the monastery garden

Yet, on the inside, there’s still a nagging recognition that it’s just the same-old-me in here.  How to reconcile the discomfiting contrast? Often, it is our communities that make the adjustment first, reflecting back the reality of what’s changed and helping us daily live into a new, expanded identity.

When someone calls me Sister Rosy it reminds me that I have made a formal commitment: to live in sibling relationship with all persons, true to the Gospel calling of Jesus Christ who has made us one family, all children of God (John 1:12). There is a leap of joy inside, a spontaneous response to hearing myself referred to as one’s sister, and simultaneously, a soberness too.  Living in sibling relationship with the world is a declaration of profound solidarity, and sacrifice. I am not always up to the challenge. Most days, I would rather just be called Rosy—there is less to live up to there, less to disappoint.

I still remember talking with a good friend who had attended my first profession ceremony. Talking afterwards, she suddenly said with vehemence: “I’ll never call you sister. It’s too formal. You’ll always be Rosy to me.” As much as I could understand her resistance to a title that she associated with her years in parochial school, it made me sad to hear it. It will take time for both of us to adjust. As much as I wanted her to know that I will always be her Rosy, I am also living into and discerning an identity. I need all the support I can get.

I don’t doubt that it’ll take time to become comfortable introducing myself as Sister Rosy. I anticipate feeling that twinge of disbelief for a while. But with the help of others and the years of formation ahead with my community, I’m hopeful that—like parents and spouses all over the world—I’ll eventually be able to become what I say I am.

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Read other blog posts from Sister Rosy in her series, Letters home.

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