Radical Hospitality: Benedict's Way of Love by Daniel Homan, O.S.B., and Lonni Collins Pratt (Paraclete Press, Brewster, Mass.)

With the title Radical Hospitality, this volume conjures images of blessed ministries of those who shelter the homeless. But Radical Hospitality is only partly about working with homeless people, being a welcoming host or treating the stranger justly. And although the authors are intimately familiar with the work of a Benedictine monastery, the book is only partly about monkish hospitality. Instead, Radical Hospitality – a friendly, readable, gentle spiritual primer – offers a stark and radical message: If we truly try to follow Jesus, our outlook on the world – especially its strangers, its poor, its homeless, its injured, its helpless, its needy, its enemies – will be forever changed. Radical Hospitality is about conversion.

Daniel Homan, O.S.B., who has lived more than four decades as a monk, is prior of St. Benedict Monastery in Oxford, Mich. Lonni Collins Pratt is a writer and frequent visitor to the monastery. Pratt and Homan lead retreats, and their book, in fact, is much like a retreat. Filled with common-sense wisdom and both uplifting and whimsical anecdotes, Radical Hospitality reads like an inspirational tape. One seems to hear it more than read it. With the enduring wisdom of St. Benedict's life and Rule as a guide, the authors lead us through the work of hospitality: accompanying those in pain, setting boundaries, listening to one's self and others, welcoming despite the risk of danger and other courageous acts.

Benedictine hospitality, Homan and Pratt tell us, is based on listening to and acceptance of the other, and on the Christian conviction that every life is sacred. But acceptance is not synonymous with condoning all about the other, or agreeing with the other. "[W]e confuse [acceptance] with tolerance, and even approval. But acceptance is about receiving, rather than judging."

In Benedictine spirituality, the monks need the "other," the stranger. The stranger brings another face of Christ into their lives, and therefore practicing hospitality is to welcome Christ. Radical hospitality leads to a provocative degree of acceptance – acceptance not only of the poor, the stranger, the injured and the needy, but also of the enemy or opponent. This is the same challenge Jesus presented: the challenge to love the enemy.

This is the point where Radical Hospitality becomes a wisdom book with profound theological implications. "Benedict's conviction," the authors write, "was that all of us are headed together toward God. We are headed toward union with God." Their focus primarily is on the enemy as defined by the political order in which we live. But implicit in their challenge, too, is the ideological enemy within our churches as well. Can we find a degree of acceptance that is real – even if minimal – and that allows us to offer a genuine word of welcome to those who disagree with us at our theological foundation? If so, we will find out for ourselves that the hospitality of Benedict truly does have power – a much-needed power for both church and world.