Reflection on meaning of hospitality for Jose Olallo Day

Bl Jose Olallo Valdez

Ahead of Jose Olallo Day (Saturday 12 February) Jack Weeks, from Olallo House, Saint John of God Hospitaller Services (SJOG) writes:

'Hospitality' once had a deeper meaning than what we're used to nowadays. As we mark 132 years since the birth of Blessed José Olallo Valdés, I want to reflect on the ways in which Olallo House, SJOG's homeless service in London, seeks to continue today the practice and vocation of hospitality in the dynamic sense that the Cuban Brother once understood it.

Olallo joined the Hospitaller Order of the Brothers of Saint John of God in 1835 in Puerto Príncipe (now known as Camagüey), and remained there until his death in 1889. He dedicated his life to creating a compassionate and caring environment for the poorest and most marginalised on both sides of Cuba's Ten Years' War, first as a senior nurse and then as community superior.

Ministry and spiritual life for Olallo had always belonged together: it meant living in constant, intimate communion with the suffering Christ and seeing Him in the suffering of the poor, in the hope that this might open the community's eyes to His presence in all things. The sense in which Olallo lived out the Order's value of hospitality wasn't 'transactional', but deeply 'relational'; it followed a radical act of self-denial in a world obsessed with personal image, power and prestige.

Similarly today, even if the pandemic has forced us to re-evaluate the role and purpose of work in our lives, society still seems orientated towards status and success more than ever. How, then, do we support and respond to those who may well consider themselves marginal, useless or a burden; those who have gone through life believing that nobody cares about them, or that what they've experienced is down to a lack of hard work, that they deserve the pain and hardship they've gone through, and feel they've got nothing to contribute?

At Olallo House, we provide holistic, trauma-informed support to rough sleepers with no recourse to public funds, in particular those undergoing treatment for TB and also victims of modern day slavery and human trafficking. And even though our guests are in dire need of financial support, we recognise that true poverty often lies in abuse and rejection, a feeling of being unloved and ignored. Following in the footsteps of Blessed José Olallo, our work similarly involves a kind of 'self-denial' that shifts attention from ourselves as 'service providers' to those who on a daily basis instil in us a call to true selflessness and generosity. And this means ensuring that those whom we support are at the centre of everything we do. In other words, we're welcoming and working alongside people to make them stronger-not only physically and psychologically, but in spirit. This is the dynamic that fuels our practice of hospitality. Indeed, I believe that it's only in this kind of active and compassionate engagement that we come to know the poverty not only outside ourselves but in our own hearts. Ultimately, those whom we support are in the end the ones who also in fact nourish us.

For many of our residents, the current system seems deliberately to be set against them, generating what some policymakers have termed 'enforced idleness'. At Olallo, we try to create an environment that stands in contrast to this sense of hopelessness by giving residents a secure space and the tools to pursue fruitful, self-determining action. To take one recent example, we have recently secured a bed at the local allotment, where residents will be able grow vegetables to give to local food banks and thus make their own contribution within the community.

The Dutch priest and theologian Henri Nouwen once wrote: "Our true challenge is to return to the centre, to the heart, and to find there the gentle voice that speaks to us and affirms us in a way no human voice ever could." I like to think that even as a lay organisation, we're all still guided by that same gentle voice as our Cuban forbearer, whether one thinks it personal conscience or God. Either way, however elusive, the fruits of our hospitality leave little doubt about the radical transformations it can bring about.

Jack Weeks is Deputy Service Manager at Olallo House, Saint John of God Hospitaller Services (SJOG)

If you wish to support Olallo's mission you can do this by donating via: www.justgiving.com/campaign/SJOGOlallo