Then you realise that your car is parked outside the door and the caller will certainly recognise it. And sure enough, the door bell rings again. Oh heck. You think to yourself: Shall I open the door and find an excuse or feign that I am not in anyway, hoping they’d finally go away? You opt for the second option, and sit it out quietly inside.
Tension is growing inside you now as you have to be certain that you can’t really be seen from outside through the curtains or other windows, even the garden ones. You can’t make any noise either. Nor continue with your chores either…..because the vacuum cleaner is too noisy! Does it sound familiar?
I hope not.
We are all called to be hospitable people and to welcome everyone, even the most inhospitable ones. We are called to love our neighbour as ourselves. But it isn't easy, especially if the one who really gets to you is the one you share your life with, your parents, your siblings, your partner. Then the going really gets tough to be able to show love. And somehow it seems easier to love someone else but your own family. Yet we are called to overcome this.
Being a good person of whatever belief means that we make no distinctions or judgements about others. Perhaps doing it Abraham's way is a bit tough....welcoming three strangers in the mid-day heat in the middle of a desert with a drink, washing their feet, a little bread and then cooking a meal for them as well (Genesis 18: 1-10)...especially when they did not even really come "knocking" on the tent door! Yet his reasoning - well spruced with more than a tinge of humility - interested me because it showed me how categorically hospitable I am expected to be: He bowed to the ground and called these strangers "his Lord" saying "if I find favour with you kindly do not pass your servant by".
It dare say that it would be a much better world if we all reasoned in this way! 
And St Paul adds a bit more of his strong sense of reasoning: "The mystery is Christ among you, your hope of glory; this is the Christ we proclaim, this is the wisdom in which we thoroughly train everyone and instruct everyone, to make them all perfect in Christ"! (Colossians 1: 24-28)
Photo on right - neighbourly love in action:
Elaine Kelly presenting flowers to
John Creedon from Carrickmines
at the launch of "Love Your Neighbour",
a
year-long community action
campaign encouraging individuals
and communities to
carry
out special acts of kindness in 2009.
(Photograph: Andres
Poveda)
