Welcome to another episode of Charisms for Catholics! Hosted by Jill Simons, the executive director at Many Parts Ministries, this podcast is dedicated to helping Catholics discern their unique spiritual gifts—also known as charisms. In today’s episode, we dive deep into the charism of hospitality and explore the lives of several saints who exemplified this spiritual gift.
The Essence of Hospitality
Hospitality, as Jill Simons describes, is more than just welcoming someone into your home. It involves making others feel welcomed and putting them at ease as Christ would. This charism includes providing for physical needs such as food, clothing, and shelter, but primarily focuses on creating an environment of ease through the presence of the Holy Spirit. This episode seeks to inspire those with this charism by presenting exemplary saints who have personified it in their lives.
St. Meinrad: The Patron of Welcoming
The first saint introduced by guest Theresa Zoe Williams is St. Meinrad, known for his undeniable hospitality. He allowed travelers to seek refuge in his hermitage, offering them food, shelter, and comfort. Despite meeting a tragic end—murdered by two individuals he had provided for—his legacy lives on. St. Meinrad’s actions serve as a quintessential example of hospitality, illustrating that true hospitality knows no bounds and always seeks to serve others selflessly.
St. Julian the Hospitaller: Radical Charity
Next, Theresa introduces us to St. Julian the Hospitaller, a saint whose very name encapsulates his charism. Known for building an inn and a hospital for the poor, Julian went so far as to welcome a leper into his own bed. This leper, as it turned out, was an angel in disguise, underscoring the biblical teaching that whatever we do for the least of our brethren, we do for Christ. Julian’s life epitomizes the radical charity and inclusiveness that hospitality calls for.
St. Martha of Bethany: A Misunderstood Model
The final saint discussed in this episode is St. Martha of Bethany, often remembered for her frustrated plea to Jesus while her sister Mary sat listening to Him. Far from being a negative example, Martha symbolizes the diligence and care involved in hospitality. Jesus’ message to her wasn’t a rebuke but a reminder that both she and her sister were performing vital, albeit different, roles. Martha’s dedication to creating a welcoming environment for Jesus and her guests makes her a compelling model for those with the charism of hospitality.
Personal Reflections: Living Hospitality Today
Theresa shares personal anecdotes about her mother, a modern-day Martha, who seamlessly integrated hospitality into her daily life. Despite her constant worry that the house wasn’t clean enough, her mother continuously welcomed guests, offering them a place to stay and making them feel at home. This real-life example reinforces that while not everyone may possess a supernatural charism, we are all called to levels of hospitality in our everyday lives.
As Jill Simons highlights, discerning your charisms can profoundly shape your faith journey. If the charism of hospitality resonates with you, look to saints like Meinrad, Julian, and Martha for inspiration and guidance. These saints exemplify how this spiritual gift can manifest in extraordinary, yet deeply human ways.
If you haven’t started your journey to understand your own charisms, Many Parts Ministries offers free resources and a charism assessment to help you begin. Visit their website to download a comprehensive guide to all 24 charisms and take the first step in your discernment journey.
Thank you for joining us this week on Charisms for Catholics. May the stories of these hospitality saints inspire you to welcome others with open hearts and open hands.
Jill Simons [00:00:00]:
Hello and welcome to Charisms for Catholics. My name is Jill Simons, and I’m the executive director at many parts ministries, where we equip the body of Christ by helping people learn about and discern their charisms, which is really another word for spiritual gifts. When you discern your charisms, you’re able to see how the Holy Spirit is already active in your life and where he is inviting you to further build the church. Let’s dive in. Hi, and welcome to today’s episode of the Charisms for Catholics podcast. Today we are talking about the charism of hospitality and several saints that really exemplify this charism of hospitality. And this whole series that we’ve been doing, taking and finding saints for all of the individual charisms is to help you look for examples in the great communion of saints, people that are like you, that have pushed those gifts to the furthest limit to really become the saints that God created them to be. So that’s what we’re going to be breaking open specifically around the charism of hospitality today.
Jill Simons [00:01:07]:
This is one that a lot of people can feel like. If it’s one of your charisms, it’s kind of a simple, maybe easy quote, unquote, it seems like to you, thing that flies under the radar, that might seem like, okay, what does it even mean to be a great saint with the charism of hospitality? And so I’m really excited to look at some examples to kind of inspire you about what that can look like. And so as I, I try to do at the beginning of every one of these episodes, I just want to remind everyone what’s really crucial to discerning and seeing the charism of hospitality. And that is that welcoming aspect, making people feel welcomed like Christ would make them feel welcome. Being able to draw them in, put them at ease, and to really desire to provide for their physical needs in a lot of situations. So this can mean feeding them, clothing them, housing them, those things. But what’s most essential is that sense of ease that you can bring to people, that is through the actual presence of the Holy Spirit. So that’s what we’re going to look for in the saints that we’re talking out or talking about today.
Jill Simons [00:02:15]:
So to do that, once again, I have Theresa Zoe Williams with me, who’s going to be sharing from her encyclopedic saint knowledge to help us find a couple of people to really look to for this charism. So thanks for being here with me today, Teresa.
Theresa Zoe Williams [00:02:28]:
It’s always good to be here. Jill. I love doing this.
Jill Simons [00:02:33]:
So who are we starting with today for hospitality?
Theresa Zoe Williams [00:02:37]:
This saint I only heard about because I had downloaded an app that had his name on it. This is St. Meinrad. And the app was honor your inner monk. And it had, like, daily short prayers that you would do. But it’s from St. Meinrad’s Abbey. So St.
Theresa Zoe Williams [00:02:54]:
Meinrad obviously didn’t found that abbey in the United States, but he was an abbot, and what he was known for was letting people into the hermitage for respite and shelter. He would let people live there. He would feed them. He would do. Everything that you just said is very stereotypically for hospitality. And we might be able to say it kind of came back and bit him in the butt, because he was murdered by two. Two people that he had let in. They were just greedy, and they wanted everything they had, and they didn’t really have anything, as they found out after they murdered St.
Theresa Zoe Williams [00:03:33]:
Meinrad. But he’s, like, very. St. Meinrad is, like, very stereotypically hospitality charism. If it made someone feel welcomed, that’s what he did. If someone needed something, he brought them in and helped them with it. So I just. I love him.
Theresa Zoe Williams [00:03:51]:
And if you don’t have the app, honor your inner monk. It’s a very fun one, authentic app, and it’s made by the abbey that was founded in St. Minerad’s name. It’s all about welcoming people in where they’re at. I even think the app kind of has this shows this charism of hospitality, because it invites you in further from where you’re at currently and invites you in a way that you can understand and feel welcomed by. And then you go deeper from there. So that’s it.
Jill Simons [00:04:22]:
And that’s very benedictine. I think that there’s a really clear reason why that we hear that name, Meinrad. There was. When I went to Benedictine, there was a father Meinrad who had taken that name. There’s St. Meinrad, Indiana, and there’s the abbey and lots of places that use this name, in part because they’re really wanting to embrace that benedictine ideal of hospitality in that way. And through the example of this saint.
Theresa Zoe Williams [00:04:47]:
Yes. If I had to match up, like, a religious order with a charism, the Benedictines would be hospitality for me.
Jill Simons [00:04:57]:
Yeah, absolutely. So who is that? The next saint I’ve never heard of before. So this is going to be brand new education.
Theresa Zoe Williams [00:05:06]:
I love this saint. His name is Saint Julian the hospitaller. So it’s right there in his name. He was just known for this. I love when we can be very direct and know right from the get go what this person is about.
Jill Simons [00:05:23]:
Yeah.
Theresa Zoe Williams [00:05:24]:
And Julian built an inn in a hospital for the poor, and he even once put a leper in his own bed to welcome him in and to take care of him while he was dying. The leper turned out to be an angel. And so it just goes to show that what you do for the least of these people, you do for me, for Christ. And I just. He’s such a great example of this. His story is a little convoluted, a little crazy, but when you parse it out and get down to the basics of what he did, this is what he did. He always welcomed people in, he took care of their needs, and he didn’t discriminate at all. No matter who you were, no matter what you were sick with, you had a place with him.
Jill Simons [00:06:13]:
That’s awesome. That’s from what it sounds like, he’s probably from an age of the church where there’s a lot of hagiography, where it’s what exactly did happen, what is legend. But we know that when we go down to, like you’re saying, like the crux of the issue, but a lot of times those stories, if hospitality is one of your charisms, if you are interested in even what is reported to be said about St. Julian or other people like that, it’s worth reading those things, because I think that the holy spirit can inspire us or move us even through those things that aren’t necessarily. This is the facts of what happened and are more about the spirit that the saint embodied and what it is that people really admired about them.
Theresa Zoe Williams [00:06:59]:
Right, exactly. And that’s basically Julian in a nutshell.
Jill Simons [00:07:04]:
So who is our final saint?
Theresa Zoe Williams [00:07:06]:
Our final one is Saint Martha of Bethany. Oh, excuse me, St. Martha of Bethany. So she’s famous for welcoming Jesus in and running around and doing all the chores and complaining that her sister Mary wasn’t doing anything at all because Mary was sitting at the feet of Jesus and just listening. Something about Martha is, it’s often, she’s often looked at negatively as what not to do, but that’s not what Jesus was saying to her. What he was saying to her is that you taking care of what you are supposed to take care of. You’re doing what you’re supposed to do. Mary is also doing what she is supposed to do.
Theresa Zoe Williams [00:07:54]:
You have different roles, different parts to play. They display different charisms. I would probably argue that Mary of Bethany’s was intercession that we did a couple weeks ago, just in how she sat and contemplated God. And you can’t really contemplate God if you’re not also interceding for those around you. And Mary’s is or Martha’s is hospitality. She knew how to welcome Jesus in. She made him feel at home. She made all the people that came with him or came to see him feel at home in her space.
Theresa Zoe Williams [00:08:31]:
She gave up her space to do that. That’s not something that I’m great at. I’m. I love my space. I need my own space. I need my time. I need, like, an inner sanctum that’s just me. And sometimes I wish I was a little more open.
Theresa Zoe Williams [00:08:50]:
And there’s a level of hospitality that we’re all called to. Right? And mine stops there. There’s no supernatural element to mine at all. But someone who calls me on in this a lot is Martha because of how she just continually, she went out to meet Jesus on the road. Even when her brother died, she didn’t wait for him to come to her. She went to him and welcomed him in. And that’s a big deal. And it makes me think of my mom a lot.
Theresa Zoe Williams [00:09:18]:
Blessed be her memory. My mom had definitely had the charism of hospitality, just. And she always complained that, like, the house was never clean enough to have company and this and that, but she let people in anyway. She didn’t stop that from letting her have company and have people and welcoming them in and throwing parties or throwing feasts for different holidays and things like that. Goodness. She let one of my friends live with my family for about six months when there was a period of transition in her life. She had offered another one of my friends when she was going through some transitions in life, she was just always, I have space, so it can be yours, too. And even though I don’t have a supernatural charism here for hospitality, when I think of hospitality, that’s who I’m modeling mine after.
Theresa Zoe Williams [00:10:10]:
Like, how can I help bring people in? And my mom really reminded me of Martha and how she went out and sought the people to bring in. She didn’t wait for them to come to her. She invited them in. And that’s a huge part of hospitality, at least to me. Is that seeking out and not just waiting for them to fall in your lap?
Jill Simons [00:10:32]:
Absolutely. I think that there’s a huge element of probably, like, a faith charism with Mary as well, where there’s, like, you’re saying there’s a natural level, or it’s always challenging to choose the right terminology because natural is not the word I ultimately want to use. But there’s kind of a base level of hospitality and faith that we’re all called to. And it was much easier for each of them to fall kind of solely in their camp. And I think that there’s so much invitation to embrace the opportunities that we do have to grow in virtue that’s gonna. The virtue it’s gonna take to do the other one. Well, you know, whatever it is, but also to be comfortable and confident, like, recognizing that the majority of your time is gonna be in the areas that you have, not just a comfort level, but also really are able to make the Holy Spirit present the way that we’re talking about through the charisms.
Theresa Zoe Williams [00:11:27]:
Yeah, no, I 100% agree. And it’s just good to know that even if you don’t have the charism, you are still called to a baseline of it, and that these people can still be models for us in our baselines. We don’t have to. Everything we do doesn’t have to be supernaturally charged. It can just be, this is my natural ability, and this is enough. And I think Mary and Martha are such a great example of this because they were both doing their supernatural charisms, and I think both of them wanted the other to just do the baseline of what they were doing supernaturally, and they weren’t getting that because they’re looking at it from two different perspectives and not putting it together. And that’s what Jesus was really calling them both onto. I know he said, mary has chosen the better part, but that’s because she didn’t complain.
Theresa Zoe Williams [00:12:24]:
That’s really what he was pointing out. Like, he pointed out that she’s not complaining because she’s doing what she knows is right, and she knows you’re doing what is right and just.
Jill Simons [00:12:35]:
And I think that that’s something that led into our series that we did on Instagram. It’s been quite a while ago now, but it’s still there in our archives, if you’re interested in checking it out on what is annoying to you based on your charisms, because I think the charisma are a lot more active. And, you know, your hospitality, your mercy, your service, the ones that are very do do, and that’s what they’re supposed to be. That’s not incorrect, that they are that way. But it can be annoying to look at someone who has a contemplative charism or one that’s a little bit less action based and be like, you are not doing anything, and struggle to find the middle ground in those things and make sure that you’re valuing other people’s contributions while still also valuing the fact that your own has worth. And it’s not about bringing everybody to the middle, necessarily. It’s about accepting the fact that different people are being called to show up in different ways.
Theresa Zoe Williams [00:13:35]:
Exactly. And Mary and Martha are just such a good dichotomy to show it because they were sisters and because they both loved Jesus so much. And it’s not like Jesus never corrected Mary either, because Mary came to Jesus, and if he were here, my brother wouldn’t have died, and he kind of pooh poohed her for that. Like, you know better than that. You know better than to grieve in.
Jill Simons [00:13:59]:
This way, in that faith charisma as well. I’ve never thought through this, like, exhaustively in the light of that. So it’s super interesting how much you can see it, really, just wherever you look in the life and the history of the church, it’s super interesting to piece that out.
Theresa Zoe Williams [00:14:14]:
It is, really.
Jill Simons [00:14:15]:
Well, thank you so much.
Theresa Zoe Williams [00:14:17]:
Thank you for having me.
Jill Simons [00:14:20]:
Thank you so much for being here with me. This week. We are going to have another episode like this in two weeks where we’ll go through another new charism and a couple of saints that are a great fit for an intercessor or an example of living and using that charism, pushing it all the way to sainthood. Next week we’ll be back with a regular episode, and if you have not started your journey to really understand your own charisms yet, I just encourage you to check out the link in the description. You can use all of our free resources. We also have a assessment, which there is a cost for, but it’s just a nominal cost so that you can begin discerning what your charisms are and how to move forward in your own journey and life of faith. Thanks so much for joining us on today’s episode of Charisms for Catholics. If you would like to learn more about your charisma or begin your own discernment journey, head to our website@manypartsministries.com, where you can download our free PDF guide to all 24 charisms and also begin your own journey by taking our charism assessment.
