The Unexpected Guest

A variegated sample of small daily revolutions.

nby GIAMPAOLO CERRI

What does one do with the Japanese girl who comes here from Hiroshima on the advice of a priest friend and then decides she doesnít want to stay in the housing arranged for her? Certainly, your house is small, but that lost young girl, who doesnít know Italian and mumbles a few words of ìJapanizedî English, reminds you of your daughter. So you move your 11-year-old daughter out of her room so that you can put the new, unexpected guest in it. And instead of a few days, she stays more than three months. Only the unexpected can save us, someone wrote. Giampaolo and Grazia, a Florentine couple, agree. For a couple of years now, they have been following the path of other friends in the association Families for Hospitality. ìThat hospitality, accepted with some reservations,î they recall, ìled to a fantastic experience.î Thus it happened that in the house with no room to take anybody in, a friendship grew between a standard Italian familyñhusband, wife, and three childrenñand a young architect from the Land of the Rising Sun, Emi. ìThat presence called us all, parents and children, to something positive,î they say. ìOur attention to her forced us to get rid of every attitude or action that was not essential. Lately,î they conclude, ìit is as though we were all more real.î The fruits arrived abundantly. And free, gratuitous. The young Japanese girl who came from a context of non-believers, began going to Mass, and on her departure from Florence gave the family who hosted her an offering for AVSI.

Nipponic obstinacy

Fruit lasting in time. Once she was in Milan, the second stop on her Italian sabbatical, as the guest of another ìfamily for hospitality,î she began to spend time with a group of recent university graduates, confessing one day to Francesca, who with Riccardo had opened their house to her, ìI did not believe, but since I have known you and the friends in Florence, I am interested in Christ.î And, with a truly Nipponic obstinacy, she always attends School of Community.

The Families for Hospitality are used to this. Many of them, without necessarily practicing adoption or foster care (the activities for which the association was founded), decided to open their homes to the needs of others, for a few days or for months, often unexpectedly. And it is not always easy. There is not always a happy ending, as Alda Vanoni, President of the association, says, ìAnd this should not scandalize anyone, because it is not the result that makes us say that the experience is good, but the certainty that by saying ëyesí to this guest, in whom Christ presents Himself to us, we work toward the creation of his kingdom among us.î Rather, it might sometimes happen that you find yourself praying and asking your friends to pray, in order to be able to bear the burden and fatigue of a hospitality that seems greater than all your strength. This happened to Nadia and Giovanni, another Milanese couple with three practically grown children. They took in a friend who had come from Tuscany to do some tests at a Milanese hospital. A few days, they thought, preparing the guest room. But their guest was diagnosed with a terrible aplasia of the bone marrow: without a transplant, he only had a few weeks to live. Nadia and Giovanni looked at each other and offered their support, saying, ìStay here.î They had no idea how difficult it is to take care of a transplant patient: special diet, everything sterilized, laundry washed separately. Nadia and Giovanni turned their home into a ìhospital.î ìWith growing exhaustion on my part,î says Nadia who, after some months and on the verge of throwing up her hands and asking her friend to make some other arrangements, heard her husband reassure her, ìIf this has happened to us, itís a sign that we can stand it.î

Not just

for ìdoing goodî

This is no glossy ìSunday schoolî picture, no glorification of doing good; it often means labor and sacrifice and things that do not happen by chance. ìWelcome the guest as though he were Christîñthe Families for Hospitality like to recall this line from the rule set down by St. Benedict for his brothers more than a thousand years ago. Onto this tradition are grafted the words, rich in tender fatherhood, with which Father Giussani has always accompanied them. ìTry reading the Letters to the Hebrews, Chapter 13,î he told them in a meeting a few years ago. ìëRemember always to welcome strangers,í says St. Paul. You will remember this passage, I hope; it is a phrase that should be your motto. ëRemember always to welcome strangers, for by doing this, some people have entertained angels without knowing it.í But it is not that they are angels; they are more than angels! They are the children of God, part of the mystery of Christís person.î

These ìstrangersî have been welcomed into Elvira and Antonioís house in Varese for many years now. Often they are called directly by the social agencies. Young people in trouble, people coming out of drug habits; the range of suffering is vast. Francesca, a young anorexic, is part of this Via Crucis of pain. This time it was not a social worker, but their daughter who led Francesca to them. This happened because in the families who practice hospitality, it is not uncommon for their children to be taught the same attitude. And when after a few months of living with them Francesca returned home, she left a letter of thanks for each member of the family. ìThank you for not making me feel like a guest,î she wrote to Elvira. Guest in the meaning of the term that is common today: someone who by some unlucky accident comes into your house, a nuisance to be got rid of in a hurry. ìThank you for laughing with me and not at me,î she wrote to their son Fabio, who, coming home at night, would often find her eating in secret. He never made a big deal out of it but turned it into a joke instead, unexpectedly lightening one of the most tragic moments of her day.

A culture

against the current

From the associationís stories comes a sampling of moments of small, daily social revolution. A social revolution because it is not of this world, of this time, of this culture to open up to the stranger, to the one who is different, other than oneself. To tear oneís private life apart, oneís idea of ease and quiet, to come to terms with oneís own quirks or the prevailing patterns of convenience and tranquility means a new way of doing things, completely against the current.

What makes Silvia and Franco, a young couple in Turin, take into their home a young man who needs help, sent to them by the Center for Solidarity of which they are a part? The boy himself revealed it in a letter sent a few months afterwards: ìNow I can say that God exists and loves me and could not have answered my questions in a better way than through your presence, which is in the end His own.î ìIn this completely unexpected way, we, who were not able to have children,î Silvia relates, ìhave learned to live more serenely with the contradiction of sterility by experiencing a different kind of fertility.î

Everyone has something to tell, including Clara from Madrid. Into the life of her familyña husband and four childrenñCarmen came one day, with a difficult life, a chronic illness, an at-risk pregnancy, and a man who did not want to have anything to do with taking care of her. ìWhen she told us about the child on the way, we rolled our eyes heavenwards,î Clara says, ìbut that fact went beyond our calculations and measures: what prevailed was the free and creative act of God.î Living in this new home for a month, Carmen began to be a new person, a woman who is beginning to love her life and that of little Dolores. ìWhy did you do it?î she asked her friends who took her in. ìBecause of a promise for the good of all which we have experienced,î they answer. And today they recall, ìWe were aware of the need we all have to be loved.î

As long

as it is necessary

This is the same awareness that moves Carmen and Beppe who, in forty years of marriage, have opened their house in Cagliari to othersí needs. Their most recent guest was Gelud, a Romanian who ended up, who knows why, in Sardinia to treat his leukemia. For seven months they shared his suffering and needs, giving up their bedroom to him, adapted in the best way possible to a sterile environment. And even if the experience seems to bear the mark of dramañGelud died while Carmen and Beppe were at the Fraternity Retreatñthey thank God and the association for having made them live moments so full of truth.

Cristina of Lugo does the same, even though she was not a part of the association and in fact, when they asked her to take in a girl in trouble for a couple of nights, she grumbled to her husband Giancarlo, ìLet it just be two nights! I know those Families for Hospitality.î But after meeting Robertañ19 years old, eight of them spent in an institutionñshe understood that she would let her stay ìas long as it is necessary.î And it is still necessary.