Welcoming & Embracing the Stranger: Lenten Reflections with the Artwork of James Tissot

March 20, 2026 - Friday of the Fourth Week of Lent

We continue to reflect during this holy time of Lent guided by a profound Gospel paradox: instead of being welcomed, Jesus experienced hostility from His own people. 

In his spiritual classic Reaching Out, Henri Nouwen describes the spiritual journey as a series of inner transformations, including the movement “from hostility to hospitality.” Fearful hostility is a natural predisposition of the human person toward the other. This fear appears clearly in the first reading, “Let us beset the just one, because he is obnoxious to us; he sets himself against our doings, reproaches us for transgressions of the law, and charges us with violations of our training” (Wis 2:12). The just person becomes inconvenient, because the presence of God reflected in the life of the just exposes the injustice of those around them. 

Jesus incarnates this reality throughout the Gospel of John. The Feast of Tabernacles (Sukkot) forms the setting of today’s passage. This feast recalled God’s presence with Israel in the desert. Now Jesus Himself—the Word who became flesh and “pitched his tent” among us (John 1:14)—comes to Jerusalem. Yet the people do not recognize His glory as the Father’s Son, full of grace and truth. Uneasy before the presence of God, many respond with hostility: they mistrust Him, persecute Him, and ultimately plot His death. 

How, then, can we welcome God into our lives, when the human heart so easily responds to His presence with fear and hostility? The Gospel suggests that there is only one path: by welcoming the other. This requires purifying our hearts of hostility and prejudice—tendencies that touch us all, whether we recognize them or try to justify them. Every act of hostility toward the other risks becoming hostility toward the God who comes to us through them. 

To welcome God, we must first create within our hearts the space to meet the other. Welcoming the stranger is not merely an ethical gesture or social courtesy; it is an act of faith. It acknowledges that God’s presence is often hidden in our neighbor. By welcoming the other, we allow our hearts to become a place free from prejudice, violence, and rigid expectations. 

In Nouwen’s words, “A spiritual life requires the discipline of creating space for others to be themselves and for God to act.” Only then will we discover the surprising presence of God, who may appear to us as a visitor but is, in truth, the host who welcomes us into His kingdom of love and peace. 

O God, who have prepared fitting helps for us in our weakness, grant, we pray, that we may receive their healing effects with joy and reflect them in a holy way of life. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever. (Roman Missal)

Rev. Juan Gabriel Rojas-Hernandez, Vice Rector of the College Seminary of the Immaculate Conception at Saint Andrew’s Hall

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