Come, One and All, to the Feast!

“Come, one and all, the greatest and the least. Come, one and all, to the feast!”

The echoes of this chorus resounded around DeBartolo 101, one of the largest lecture halls on the Notre Dame campus, every Thursday for four weeks during the summer of 2015. As part of Notre Dame Vision, the Catholic conference for high school students I worked at last summer, three musicals based on parables from the Gospels are performed. This particular song comes from a musical based on the parable of the Great Banquet, where a rich man and his wife open their home to people from the streets for a beautiful feast: a wonderful example of love and hospitality.

This past Thursday, I had the privilege of witnessing the parable of the Great Banquet in action here in London. St. Patrick’s Parish, located in a neighborhood called Soho, hosts a program called Open House every Tuesday and Thursday evening. Since 2003, St. Patrick’s has invited “one and all,” the homeless and vulnerable community from the surrounding area, into their parish hall for a banquet of warm, nutritious comfort food. Guests at Open House range from fifty to seventy people each week twice a week. They are greeted in prayer, hospitality, and love. I had the opportunity to serve food to the guests at Open House this week with eight other Notre Dame students as an optional part of our orientation activities in London.

The musical adaption of the parable of the Great Banquet from this summer brought the Biblical story to life for me. The rich man and his wife are generous, grateful people who wish to share their wealth with their friends, but the people they invite to the banquet find numerous reasons to turn down their invitation. Saddened but still excited to host the banquet and to share their gifts, the couple throws open their doors to anyone and everyone from the streets – “Come, one and all,” they sing. “The greatest and the least…come, one and all, to the feast!”

'"Go out at once into the streets and lanes of the town and bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame.' And the slave said, 'Sir, what you ordered has been done, and there is still room.' Then the master said to the slave, 'Go out into the roads and lanes, and compel people to come in, so that my house may be filled."'

(Luke 14: 22-23)

The Open House crew at St. Patrick’s exuded this spirit of hospitality from the moment I and the other Notre Dame students showed up to offer our time. They welcomed us into their parish family, and invited us to show the guests of Open House hospitality alongside them. And in the same way that the guests who did show up to the banquet in the parable truly wanted to be there, so did the guests at Open House. They seemed grateful to have a warm place to rest in close company with others, and were excited to dine on nutritious rice and chicken and to sip on hot coffee and tea. Many saved seats for their family members and friends as they trickled in before the meal. An aura of gratitude filled the place: we all joined together for that meal as one family within this special parish.

Everyone, in both the parable and in my lived experience at St. Patrick’s Open House, had responded to a call: some to invite, some to attend, some to serve. All had humbly accepted these calls and were grateful to be there for a few hours of shared time. No matter which form of call the people who gathered in the room had responded to, whether a call to serve or an invitation to be served, we were all there to share in community, to gather around food, to treasure communal respite from the cold streets outside. I was full of gratitude both for the hospitality St. Patrick’s showed me and for the opportunity to interact with and offer care to the guests attending Open House.

Near the end of the night, we all sat down together – hosts and guests – to share prayer intentions and to sing a few hymns. One of the songs referred to wandering: we asked Mary to intercede for “us wanderers.” It occurred to me that everyone there was a wanderer in our own way. Many of the guests attending Open House are in between homes and jobs, wandering. Many of those who had come to serve were in the midst of transition, and had wandered there from all over the world: London, the States, Germany, Australia, Scotland. I am certainly wandering this semester: I am extremely fortunate to consider the UK and Europe my classroom.

In the musical portrayal of the parable of the Great Banquet, there is a moment when the rich man and his wife, their servants, and all the guests they have invited to their table from far and wide join together in song and dance. This moment was made manifest to me during the Open House as we sang the prayerful hymn about wandering. We each offered our wandering selves to God in hope and in the trust that He answers us,

“Come, one and all, the greatest and the least. Come, one and all, to the feast!”

Photo by Maggie Duncan

Disturb Us, Lord: My catholic Catholic Faith

I am really good at going on adventures and really bad at some of the transitions I’m required to make in order to adventure. The process of moving to London, England to study abroad for four months has been no exception, which is slightly frustrating and also slightly humorous. But mostly, it’s humbly human. And all the moving parts involved in moving to and settling into London have led me to cling to the one part – the whole, really – that does not change: God.

When winter break rolled around last month, I packed up my cozy dorm room and moved out, saying goodbye to dear friends and a campus I have come to call home. Two weeks later, I left my home in Portland and said goodbye to my family with my entire life in two bags, and I questioned my sanity. Upon arriving in London, an immense tornado of blended excitement, nervousness, and disorientation flooded my being as I attempted to learn my way around a place I had only dreamed about that had suddenly become my new home.

As 140 jetlagged Spring London students began splitting off into groups for meals and activities, a certain amount of low-key panic set in. Which friends was I supposed to be making? Would the people I talked to within the first couple days determine travel plans throughout the rest of the semester? What if I was missing out on group texts that revealed key information about future events with awesome people? My mind reverted to its eighteen-year-old-fresh-college-student mentality, paired with a more mature desire to be known and loved here, which led to some moments of (irrational) insecurity.

Beyond these silly queries, there were more practical questions to be answered. Where should I buy my groceries? Why can’t I understand British accents (aren’t they also speaking English)? What in the world is an Oyster Card? (I have since learned that it’s for public transportation, and have used it many times). For the duration of my first week in London, my head whirled in a constant state of questions. The learning curve was steep.

On my third day in London, I noticed God taking control. He reminded me about the peace only He can bring. Sure, in prayer I had been asking God to bless my time here, challenge my classmates and me to grow and flourish in this new home of ours, and help me solve the petty worries I expressed in my earlier flood of questions. But I had neglected to ask Him for what I really needed, which was a moment of peace, of rest, of love. He, knowing better than I, provided one anyway.

Last Saturday, I arrived in my classroom building for an orientation session a bit early, and decided to explore. I ended up on the fourth floor and entered the unassuming door marked “Chapel” in a sort of daze (which was half caused by remnant jetlag and half the result of laboring up four sets of very steep steps which seem to characterize all buildings here). Upon entering the cozy worship space at the top of a bustling building of academia, I simply sunk into a chair and wept. God had provided what I didn’t know I needed all along. In the midst of an uprooting transition during which seemingly nothing had been certain, I was given the gift of dwelling in the real, physical presence of the Eucharist within the tabernacle. Complete peace enveloped me as I gazed at the sanctuary lamp indicating Christ’s presence. This peace allowed me to distance myself from the disorienting task of creating a home in the heart of London enough to be utterly grateful for the chaos that I had formerly felt discouraged by.

Gratitude has infused my general disposition ever since my encounter with the Eucharist in the chapel last week. Gratitude for the people around me, for the constantly new sights and smells and tastes I have been blessed to experience, for the adventure that comes with being in a new place. All of this gratitude is rooted in a thanks for something bigger, the thing which allowed me the encounter of gratitude in the first place last week: my catholic Catholic faith. The word “catholic” means “universal.” I am blessed to be part of something so infinitely bigger than myself that it brings me to humble, joyful tears as it did in the chapel last week. Each time I have directly encountered the physical Eucharist since then – in Adoration and in several Masses in various settings – I have come to the same realization: no matter where I go to celebrate Mass, it will always look basically the same. The same sacred liturgy is celebrated. The same Eucharist is really present. The same Body of Christ is manifest in the people gathering around the same table of the Lord. My catholic Catholic faith has rooted me in hope here in London.

St. Patrick's Cathedral, where we celebrated Mass last Sunday

Westminster Cathedral, where we celebrated Mass this Sunday 

The exterior of Westminster Cathedral

As a person who struggles with transitions, I take great comfort in routine. As a person who finds joy in spontaneity, I love to engage in adventures within my routine. In the midst of the chaos of settling into a semester abroad, the Eucharist has provided me with a sense of both routine and adventure. God has guided me, through several encounters with the Eucharist so far, to take comfort in the catholicism and the Catholicism of my faith. I am extremely grateful.

A prayer for this semester:

Disturb us, Lord, when

We are too pleased with ourselves,

When our dreams have come true

Because we dreamed too little,

When we arrived safely

Because we sailed too close to the shore.

Disturb us, Lord, when

With the abundance of things we possess

We have lost our thirst

For the waters of life;

Having fallen in love with life,

We have ceased to dream of eternity

And in our efforts to build a new earth,

We have allowed our vision of the new Heaven to dim.

Disturb us, Lord,

To dare more boldly,

To venture on wilder seas

Where storms will show Your mastery;

Where losing sight of land,

We shall find the stars.

We ask you to push back the horizons of our hopes,

And to push back the future

In strength, courage, hope, and love.

We ask this in the name of our Captain, who is Jesus Christ.

Amen.

-Sir Francis Drake