Chapter 53: The reception of guests (paragraphs 1-4)

The greatest care should be taken to give a warm reception to the poor and to pilgrims, because it is in them above all others that Christ is welcomed. (From para. 4 of Ch. 53 of Saint Benedict's Rule, trans. by Patrick Barry, OSB, 1997.)

My experience of being an assistant to mentally handicapped adults in a L'Arche household made very real and reasonable for me a radical gospel message: Put the poor (the weak, the disenfranchised, the vulnerable) at the center of community. I think this is the kind of community that generates transformative relationships for everyone.