Fridays with Benedict: More from Chapter 53, "In Them More Particularly Is Christ Received"

We can't move on from the great hospitality chapter in The Rule of St. Benedict--Chapter 53--without mentioning another passage.

Last week we noted how Chapter 53 begins with saying that guests are to be received as if we are receiving Christ himself. Expanding upon this directive later in the chapter we read:

¹⁵Great care and concern are to be shown in receiving poor people and pilgrims, because in them more particularly Christ is received...

We might call this the hospitality version of "the preferential option for the poor."

Hospitality is for all, but in welcoming the poor is Christ more particularly received.

The King will reply, "Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me." 

Matthew 25.40