And You Welcomed Me: A Sourcebook on Hospitality in Early Christianity

This book presents a collection of early Christian texts regarding hospitality and its practices. The range of experts both in time and space shows just how central a role of hospitality played in Christian life throughout the early centuries. Yet this book is not a set of instructions for hospitality, nor does the word "hospitality" even appear in many of these excerpts, and this in itself is good cause for reflection for us today. The excerpts come from letters, diary accounts, instructions, sermons, travelogues, and community records and rules. They are windows into a world of early communities that saw it as their moral duty and also privilege to care for the sick, to safeguard the pilgrim, and to host the stranger. Abram and Sarai hosting the three angels at Oaks of Mamre, and Jesus and his disciples feeding the crowds are two familiar biblical examples, but this book also delves into lesser know texts that offer rich insight to those willing to read and then integrate the early fathers' and mothers' wisdom and hospitality into their own lives.