The end room on the first floor of the retreat house–the equivalent today of 108–was often occupied, in time gone by, by a permanent guest. I am not recommending this. I do not need to. I am just bragging on it.

Everett Edelen, of a fine, old family, was a good example. He was living a wretched life, and we offered him hospitality and the hope of a better life. He accepted and was healed. He became a real Christian. He was robbed of the four thousand dollars everyone knew he kept in a watch pocket, and was badly beaten up at the gate when he came back late one night. He was not dearly loved in the area.

Then there was Leo Gannon, for years the retreat house resident secretary. We bought him a house in Louisville when he retired, but when widowed, he wanted to spend his last days here. He did.

Or Bernard Fox, retired, who became our driver and took the monks where they needed to go. He began the practice of fresh fruit always at table.

Dr. Dan Walsh, Columbia professor, later priest in Louisville. He then lectured here and locally.

There were others. Many others.

Monks preach hospitality and practice it. Years ago, about a century, give or take a few years, the third floor east was private rooms reserved for priests who had a drinking problem. Bishops would send them here for penance and reform for a month or two or longer. To be sure, we did nothing special for them in terms of their addiction. No one did in those days. Alcohol was thought a moral problem. Carl Jung the Oxford group, Alcoholics Anonymous from Akron, proved otherwise and developed a program that combined the grace of God–the moral side–and good psychology–the praxis side. The Servants of the Paraclete developed the first Catholic treatment center in Jemez Springs, New Mexico, in 1947.

Today we have another problem–thought moral–and not restricted to priests any more than alcohol is. And not a great deal is known about it. They at last begin to learn the grace of God and sound psychology are involved.

Kindness, mercy, compassion, healing hospitality, are all in order. All are monastic values and practices, rooted in the Gospel, expressed in washing one another's feet. Yet it all must be intelligent and effective, not mere ritual or simplistic do-goodism. We learn. We try. God knows we try.

We celebrate today one of the greatest events in history. We can list the ultimate three after Creation itself: the Incarnation of Christ, the Passion, Death, and Rising of Christ, and tonight the Third: the Eucharist. And the service of the Eucharist: the priesthood.

You understand properly, I think, if you see the Eucharist as combining the other two major events: the Incarnation and the Passion, Death, and Rising.

The Eucharist is Christ incarnate. And it is the Passion, Death, and Rising of Christ. But it is Christ in another mode. Another form or manner. The human Christ, the divine Christ, the Body and the Blood, soul and divinity of Christ–but in a new way: under the form of a meal, of food and drink, of bread and wine. And here, too, Passion, Death, and Rising. In a new form. Body and Blood separated: as bread and wine. Hence death.

That is why Eucharist is sacrifice, presence, food and drink. The greatest of sacraments; the most profound. And the priesthood, begun this day, carries it out: he is the priest who stands at the altar as Christ, offers the sacrifice as Christ. The bread and wine having become the sacrificed Christ put to death by sinners. By you. By me. By all. Timeless. Out of time. Yet in time.

Every moment of the day and night, Christ is offered to the Father for the sins of humankind. He pleads for mercy. For pardon. For healing. And the pledge of that, the promise of it, is in the Communion in which the Body and Blood of the Saving Victim is received.

There is, of course, nothing like it in the world.

Simple enough for a child to grasp. Deep enough for the most gifted mind, challenging the most noble heart, the deepest faith.

And since it is the Passion, Death, and Rising, it is also the descent to Hell, in dated language, or, more appropriately, to the regions of the dead to gather those who never knew Him on earth, yet who followed the light they had as best they could, the light that is given everyone come into this world.

Granted that zeal for the Faith has carried it to every corner of the world, grant also that untold millions have not heard of Christ. What of them, as Peter asked concerning John. What of them?

The question is the more pointed for our failing to carry Christ everywhere. “And if he be until I come, what is that to you? You follow Me.”

Meanwhile, then, practice hospitality, not the hospitality of a good business, but the hospitality of the heart, extended to all who show up at our door, who knock at the gate.

God spare us a day when we'd be known as
        a cheese plant–
        a bakery–
        a candy kitchen–
        a retreat house–
and not as a monastery.

And the mystery of the Faith goes beyond obvious hospitality to any comer, but extends to all who live, indeed to all the dead Christ visits in each Mass,
“that every knee may bend,
in Heaven,
on earth,
and under the earth.”

I need not remind you, need I, that a people endowed with the gift of faith, totally undeserved, surely not merited, ought in it to expedite the work of Jesus through a life for the salvation of all. That’s what He came for. That’s what we're involved with. Today.  Every day.  Really?  Really.  Amen.