The following is based on a talk given in May 2022 for the Council of Catholic Women at St. John the Baptist Parish in Waunakee.
It was a bitterly cold winter day.
My four children and I had just come home after work and school, and since it was too cold to even play outside, I had just announced a “pajama day,” so we all had changed into our PJs and robes and we were having a cozy afternoon indoors.
The house was a disaster everywhere, with homework and crafts on the kitchen table, toys on the living room floor, school bags and coats in the hallway.
And then the doorbell rang. Two Jehovah’s Witnesses were standing on my doorstep.
Call to hospitality
On that cold day with myself and my children all in pajamas and robes and the house a mess, I really did have good reason to not even answer the door.
However, my husband had recently just said to me, “You know, honey, we should really practice the virtue of Christian hospitality. We hardly have people over and it is really something our family could work on.”
He was right. We don’t normally entertain a lot of people at our home. But with his call to hospitality echoing in my mind, despite the horror of letting strangers into my messy house, I forced myself to answer the door — even in my robe.
“Come on in!” I said, opening the door wider. “It’s cold outside!”
And the two ladies came in and sat down at my kitchen table, where I had to push aside books and cups of hot cocoa and brush off crumbs. And there we began to have a conversation about God.
Who’s evangelizing whom
I listened to them, I told them I admired the fact that they go door to door talking about God, and I told them that we’re Catholic.
In our discussion at some point, one of the ladies asked me: “What do you enjoy about being Catholic?” I looked her in the eye and said, “It doesn’t matter what I enjoy about being Catholic. Because once you know the Truth, there is no turning to anything else.”
Both of them were silent, probably realizing at this point . . . that they’d entered the wrong house. Not only had this crazy lady in a bathrobe invited them into her house, BUT she also was someone whom they did not have a chance of converting AND who was in fact trying to convert them.
Right there at her messy kitchen table.
Love amid messiness
At that moment, all four of my children in their PJs came tumbling into the kitchen and said, “Mom, can we show them our play downstairs?”
Of course, I was thinking sarcastically to myself, we can invite these strangers even deeper into our house — the disastrous basement, into which no guests were usually allowed — and they will never want to return to this house again!
“Sure!” I said out loud. “Why not?” So we all trooped down to the basement and stepped over toys and laundry and all kinds of things and watched my children present their play.
Of course it was adorable — “The Three Little Kittens” complete with makeshift costumes and props — and the two ladies clapped and smiled and enjoyed it.
And I knew they loved our little Catholic family, despite our outward messiness.
A week or so later, those ladies sent us a card in the mail, thanking us for our visit and saying it was the highlight of their day.
After my husband’s slightly alarmed “You did what?” reaction, I was actually really glad his words about hospitality caused me to open the door wider that day, because I’m pretty sure those ladies see a lot of closed doors.
Heart of evangelization
I realized later that hospitality really is at the heart of evangelization, when you open the doors of your heart and home to the domestic Church inside, even when it is really difficult.
Despite my horror of inviting strangers into my house that day, those two ladies were exposed to the reality of the domestic Church in action, the reality of striving to raise children who know, love, and serve God regardless of the messiness of life and the darkness of our times.
That’s evangelization. That’s the heart of the domestic Church in our households.
And that’s all God needs us to do in these times — to love our families, to teach them the unchangeable Truth of our Catholic Faith.
And sometimes He may allow opportunities for it to spill out into the world to touch those He puts in our lives.
Julianne Nornberg, mother of four children, is a teacher’s aide at St. John the Baptist School in Waunakee.