Day 4: Presentation Day Novena

Today, we reflect on HOSPITALITY

We remember our Presentation family in Zambia and Zimbabwe

We begin in the name of God our creator,

Christ who shows us the way and

the Spirit who continues to give us hope and courage

Scripture Luke 14:14

When you hold a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind: blessed indeed will you be because of their inability to repay you.

Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.    Hebrews 13:2

“How shall we live? Welcoming to all.”  Mechtild of Magdeburg

Woman of Welcoming Heart, Raphael Consedine in Songs for the Journey.

 “They know her in the crowded lonely ways

Woman of welcoming heart, whose lantern sheds

Kind beams for eyes waste-minded by the weary miles,

For them her hands are open, for her their doors.

Room is made by dim and smoking fire, some small crust shared,

And she, receiving, knows still more to give,

And welcomed, grows in art of welcoming.

Apart, in shadowed hours of night and dawn,

Leaning heart to heart on the One who pulses life

Into the lowliest and least of all that lives,

She learns to un-clasp the last-kept store

And lay it down in welcome: “Take and share”

Christmas Day 1777

Nano and her newly formed community hosted 50 guests for dinner, Today, Presentation people are called to carry this spirit of hospitality into our world.

What stays with you from the poem “Woman of welcoming heart?”

As we remember the needs of our world today, we respond: Give us welcoming hearts