Our Lady of Sorrows, Cuzco School
Good afternoon to all my readers! Greetings after two years of not writing! These past two years have been very busy with some major changes in my life, mainly that I am now attending seminary to become a lay healthcare chaplain. I got accepted to SMU Perkins School of Theology in the fall of 2022, on a full tuition scholarship for a Master of Arts in Ministry Degree. If I continue that plan, I will be finished with my degree in May of 2025. However, I am in the process of trying to switch to a Master of Divinity degree plan so that I can take courses in the Healthcare Chaplaincy concentration offered in that degree. If I switch to an MDiv, I will probably not graduate for two more years at least.
I also have changed jobs since the last time I wrote in this blog. I started a new job at St. Francis Anglican Church as their Music Director and Organist in January of 2024. I also serve there presently as a pastoral care intern, as part of my internship for my degree at SMU Perkins. The job is a great fit for me, especially as an Eastern Orthodox Christian. St. Francis Anglican Church belongs to the ACNA, the Anglican Church of North America. The ACNA is a conservative Anglican branch that holds the same family and Biblical values as those in my own faith tradition, Eastern Orthodoxy. It is not easy to find employment as a church musician with traditional values, so St. Francis Anglican Church is like a breath of fresh air after years of working in environments that caused me stress because of pressures to compromise my beliefs. St. Francis Anglican Church is also Anglo-Catholic, which resonates with me because I have a deep love of the Western Rite liturgical tradition, and I pray the Rule of St. Benedict as my prayer rule.
Other changes in my life over the past couple of years include the sad fact that my brother-in-law Theodosios, the youngest brother of my husband David, died at the end of May in 2024. My husband David has taken care of his two mentally and physically disabled brothers, Theodosios and Chris, for most of his life. Theo died of multiple medical complications after a long battle with congestive heart failure and lymphedema. Chris is now bedbound, in a hospital bed in our living room, with his own multiple medical conditions. My husband stays at home and takes care of Chris, 24-7. In the meantime, I work and go to school.
As my readers can no doubt see, I live a very busy life, both personally and professionally. I work at my internship, and I play musical performances as a sacred musician. In the midst of this work, I end up attending events, and sometimes these are church receptions and dinners. I observe a lot of human behaviour, and I experience a lot of different situations.
One situation I recently experienced, where I observed and participated in the social dynamics at a large church reception I attended, caused me to start thinking about what it means to show love towards strangers and visitors in church communities. Sometimes we are the hosts of these events, and other times, we are the stranger who enters the room. What approach should we take as Christians, if we are either of those? Here is a reflection I wrote about it a couple of days ago, considering the positions of stranger and host from both sides.
What does it mean to welcome a stranger? Welcoming a stranger doesn't mean just saying hello when they come into the church hall and telling them to have a seat. It means helping that person find a place if he/she is the only person in the room with no table. Being a stranger in the room means you don't know anyone, and you don't know where to sit. It means that when you are wandering around alone in a reception hall, you are visible to everyone and all can see that you are not being immediately welcomed at anyone's table. It means that if you just randomly sit somewhere, it may be at a table where nobody wants you and their platitudes will be hollow at best. We, as the hosts who invited you to the event, should help you find a place and introduce you to people. If we are not willing to do that, then we might want to ask why this is a struggle for us. If the answer is that we're too busy to deal with it because we've got a room full of people to attend, then, is there someone else we can delegate who can help find that stranger a place?
The Gospel passage in Matthew 25: 41-46 makes it quite plain that we are called upon to clothe the stranger. I equate this with welcoming the stranger as well. There are many other passages in the Gospels that deal with welcoming people at our table. Reading verses Matthew 25: 41-43 should give us pause and make us wonder if, at church events, we are really being welcoming to the stranger.
Matthew 25: 41-46
41 “Then He will also say to those on the left hand, ‘Depart from Me, you cursed, into the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels: 42 for I was hungry and you gave Me no food; I was thirsty and you gave Me no drink; 43 I was a stranger and you did not take Me in, naked and you did not clothe Me, sick and in prison and you did not visit Me.’
44 “Then they also will answer Him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to You?’ 45 Then He will answer them, saying, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to Me.’ 46 And these will go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”
While we've all been the stranger at some point, most of us have also been the host at some point too. Sometimes it can be much more comfortable to sit contentedly with our friends than get up and invite a new person to come sit with us. We fall into error through the illusion of conformity and contentment when we have a place, and we forget what it's like NOT to have a place, like that stranger who just entered the room. Such forgetfulness can happen to anyone. We've all experienced it, but it's worth pondering for our edification.
It is even more challenging if the stranger who enters does not fit into our category of how someone should look or act, or if the stranger is really not a stranger, but rather an acquaintance who annoyed us greatly the last time we saw him/her. I am, of course, assuming that we are talking about a fairly normal stranger, not someone dangerous. So. . .how can we see Christ in the stranger?
If we are the stranger, what can we do that is best for our salvation and that of others? What are we called to do? How can we overcome the invariable embarrassment of not being able to find a place at a table, and then turn that in a direction for the flow of God's grace? I have been thinking that perhaps there is a point where, in such a situation, the stranger becomes a host too.
My personal response to this question and the Gospel passage above is threefold:
(1) If I'm the host, I will endeavour to treat newcomers better if they come into a place I frequent, be that my own Orthodox parish, the Anglican church where I work, a reception I attend, or even my local grocery store.
(2) If I'm the host, I will try to talk to people if they want to approach me at a reception, but if I'm tired, I think I can also be honest with them about that. It's okay to tell them that I need to sit down, that I'm not feeling well, or that I can't stay long to chat.
(3) What if I'm the stranger? It's easy to feel unwelcome if you are at a large event and everyone is sitting at tables with family and friends, and you don't feel like you can intrude. But maybe instead of going to a negative place, it might be fruitful to look for someone else who is alone in the room. Who is sitting all by themselves with nobody to talk to? Who is sitting over in a corner crying because he/she had a sudden moment of remembrance about someone who recently died in the family? Who is sitting by themselves fretting over a life situation that has them worried? Do they need company? It might not hurt to check and see.
Once personal feelings are set aside, which is NOT easy to do, we can focus on how God is calling us in a given moment. When we unite our minds and hearts with God and follow His lead on how we can best navigate a situation, then we have opened up our hearts to Divine Grace.
