When the parish I served for many years figured out its top three priorities for mission and ministry, one was hospitality. No surprise there; most parishes would want to say the same.

A few years later, when a Chaldean (Christian) community came alongside us, the parish was challenged to put its money where its mouth was. The Chaldeans were a large group, and the result was not without its challenges.

When Jesus is asked which is the greatest commandment, he mentions two: love of God and love of neighbour. These remain fundamental to our lives as followers of Christ. We not only need to say we love God and our neighbour, but we have to live out what we say. As a community, how do we love the people who live in our community, who are our neighbours? As individuals, how do we love people with whom we have daily contact, who are our neighbours?

At face value, to love God and our neighbour seems straightforward enough. In practice, we are asked to love people who threaten our sense of self, who make us feel uneasy, and sometimes seem to have very different ways of living from the way we choose to live. When someone ‘steals’ our parking spot or cuts in line ahead of us at a store, we aren’t always charitable to our neighbour.

When I reflect on my time as a long-term parish priest in Surrey, one of my greatest joys was how the community’s practice of hospitality led to a unified community, with two first languages, Arabic and English. Did we make mistakes? We did. Could we have done things better? Absolutely. Nothing in life or in church is ever easy. Yet loving our neighbour gave the original (English-speaking) community far more than we ever imagined.

Each day, in a variety of ways, we are challenged, as a community and as individuals, to answer the call to love God and our neighbour. Sometimes our response will take us out of our comfort zone, and the demands will be heavy. However, we follow the one who went out of his way, time after time, and ultimately it led Jesus to lose his life. Though we may not be asked to give up our lives, we are called to love God and love our neighbour, and to work out what that means.

Father Stephen Rowe

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