The Work of Hospitality

One Wednesday afternoon in early August 2014, I found myself at a table with Chef Leah Chase in her restaurant, Dooky Chase’s, in the heart of Treme. It was after the lunch rush had passed, and we sat at a white linen-draped table in the smaller dining room. Ice water in crystal goblets perspired in slow motion as we talked. I was there to interview “Miss Leah” for a radio segment. The segment was only 30 minutes. Yet, almost two hours later, we were still talking.

This woman—who, at the time, informed me she was 91 and a half years old—regaled me with stories of the countless celebrities and the plethora of presidents, prime ministers, and prelates she had hosted in her restaurant. Michael Jackson (and his brothers), Hank Aaron, Ray Charles, Ernest Gaines, and Quincy Jones were but a few of those famous patrons. Many of them were repeat guests, and some became friends. Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama both dined there. It was well known that President Bush would never come to New Orleans without first calling Miss Leah to make a reservation or to invite her to join him for dinner at another establishment. None of these esteemed guests came to marvel at the restaurant’s architecture or admire its decor, despite the fact that the restaurant was filled with cherished art that Miss Leah had collected over the years. They came for the food and to experience the heart of the chef who prepared it.

A central theme of our discussion that day was hospitality. At 91 and a half, Miss Leah could still recount to me what she served to whom and when from decades before. She told me that President Bush loved her Grits and Breakfast Shrimp and her Braised Quail with Plum Jelly. She told me that Michael Jackson loved her Sweet Potato Pie and that she would ship pies to him every year. Southern hospitality is well and good—and we should certainly cherish it—but as a Catholic, Miss Leah knew there was something more to it, something beyond what could be seen. A cradle Catholic, one of 13 children, born and raised in Madisonville, LA, Miss Leah innately understood the sacramental nature of hospitality. She loved people; that was her secret. And she truly believed that all the world’s problems could be solved around the table over a bowl of hot gumbo and a piece of fried chicken. Of course, somebody had to put in the work to make that gumbo and fry that chicken. That’s simply part of being hospitable. It’s part of living the gospel.

Sometimes living the gospel in this way—being hospitable and serving others—can seem to result in big, yet easy, blessings. For example, Miss Leah not only served royalty, but you could say that through her service, she became royalty. She was known the world over as the “Queen of Creole Cuisine.” And, beyond that, thanks to the magic of Disney, Miss Leah was “transformed” into royalty with the release of The Princess and the Frog in 2009. She was the inspiration behind Disney’s Princess Tiana.

But living a life of hospitality doesn’t always look and feel glamorous. A glance toward the life of Dorothy Day can give us another view entirely. Dorothy was a convert to Catholicism. Prior to her conversion at the age of 30, she lived a troublesome life. She was a college dropout, an activist concerned with the plight of the poor and the working class, and a journalist. She was deeply influenced by socialist and communist ideas, yet she never became a Communist. At one point, she had an abortion. She later lived with a man she truly loved. But he was an atheist who didn’t believe in marriage. She carried and gave birth to his child. It was during this pregnancy that her heart began to open to the Catholic Church. She had been on a search for a long time, restless and aware of a “presence,” despite being an atheist. She was, as she later described, “haunted by God.” Eventually, she left the man she loved to follow Christ and to become a member of the Church. This was the beginning of the Dorothy who—after her death at the age of 83—would be described by Fr. Daniel Berrigan, SJ, as a woman who “lived as if the gospel were true.”

As an activist in her early years, she ruffled feathers and suffered for it. She had been in jail more than once for her work on behalf of workers and her stance against social injustice, which included protesting the treatment of suffragists and, later, protesting war. This fiery streak did not leave her after she became Catholic. She continued to work for justice for the poor and the marginalized, and her work often put her in conflict with the Church hierarchy. Like an Old Testament prophet, she comforted the afflicted and afflicted the comfortable. As a Catholic, Dorothy’s activism took on the distinct aroma of hospitality. She sought to live out the gospel, not only in the minutiae of her life but also as the fundamental pulse of what her life was all about. Just a few short years after her conversion, she co-founded (along with Peter Maurin) the Catholic Worker Movement. She embraced a life of voluntary poverty, as did the many who joined her in this new work. The houses of this movement were called Houses of Hospitality. They were gathering places for the poor and marginalized, places where all were welcome.

To be honest, I find Dorothy’s life unnerving. It’s radical. It challenges me. It reminds me of my friend Heather King, a memoirist and recovering alcoholic, who is also a Benedictine Oblate, as was Dorothy. In her book on prayer, Holy Desperation, she writes, “Here’s how you know your life in Christ is bearing fruit…. In spite of your own suffering, loneliness, and pain, you’re welcoming. You’re warm. You’re kind (or you’re at least shooting for those things, and not just toward the people who can do something for you, but everyone). You’re in immediate contact with a few drunks, someone who’s headed into or has just emerged from a psych ward, an incarcerated felon or two, a young girl who’s pregnant out of wedlock, several women who have had abortions and are in silent, excruciating mourning, at least one stripper, several people in desperately unhappy marriages, about to be evicted from their apartments, or dying, a minimum-wage worker or two, at least three people who are certifiably insane…” The list goes on. And it’s not that your list or my list is going to look just like that. It’s that my list shouldn’t look like people who are all just like me. Or only the people that I like. Heather goes on to write that “our model, as always, is Christ. Who did Christ hang out with? Drunks, prostitutes, tax collectors who were thirsting for something better.” Heather’s point, very much like Dorothy’s, was simply that the Christian life is not about (only) Jesus and me. That. And when it comes to love, maybe it’s good that I’m uncomfortable. The gospel isn’t meant to be easy.

We live in a splintered world, a world where our hearts and attention are numbed with distraction, a world where people are drifting farther from each other despite being more “connected.” And even though New Orleans has a thriving hospitality industry and a long history of southern hospitality, the fact is that, fundamentally, hospitality is a disposition of the heart. To carry it from the past, to live it in the present, we have to work at it. It’s something that we have to cultivate.

Perhaps Dorothy Day is an extreme example. We all aren’t called to live in voluntary poverty in solidarity with the poor. But, as Flannery O’Connor once noted, “to the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost-blind you draw large and startling figures.” Maybe we need the extreme example of Dorothy Day to shock us into recognizing our impoverished disposition of heart. Yes, it is true that we are not all called to live the kind of life that Dorothy lived, but we are certainly called—by Christ himself—to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the imprisoned, and welcome the stranger (see Matthew 25). Our world of smartphones and Zoom meetings, social media feeds, and constant notifications not only makes it difficult to do what Christ bids us to do, but it makes it more difficult for us to even want to do what he bids. And when we do make the effort, too often we fall into the temptation to do it for show, for likes, for clicks.

Dorothy aimed for the heart, but she touched it through the body, taking care of the real needs of real people. She loved literature; she loved to read. And one of her favorite novels was Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov. There was one section that touched Dorothy so deeply that she quoted it regularly. It comes from Chapter 4 of Book 2. The chapter is titled “A Lady of Little Faith.” It relates the story of a woman who visits Father Zosima and confesses her lack of faith. She is afraid to die, and she finds it hard to imagine eternal life. She feels disconnected from God. As a remedy, Father Zosima advises her to practice love in action. He explains that faith is not something abstract but is nourished through acts of love and humility. He acknowledges that active love is difficult and that she could even feel exhausted and unappreciated for her efforts. Yet he reaffirms that love in action is the path to overcoming despair and finding God. Father Zosima also warns against the temptation of “romanticized love,” which is based on fleeting emotions or the desire for recognition. Instead, he encourages a selfless, enduring love that seeks no reward. In the end, he offers these words that Dorothy embraced and often quoted: “Love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams.” This quote highlights the sacrificial nature of love and reinforces the fact that love takes effort; it takes work. And it doesn’t always feel good.

Love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams, but it’s not without joy. That, I think, is the trick. How can I—in imitation of Jesus—pour myself out in service to my brothers and sisters, even to the point of discomfort and exhaustion, perhaps receiving nothing but ingratitude for my efforts, and still find joy in the giving? The joy is there, a gift from God, when I am open to receiving it, when my gift of self is given freely, to touch Christ in the other. Dorothy experienced and acknowledged this difficulty. “It is not easy always to be joyful,” she wrote, “to keep in mind the duty of delight.” It’s not always easy, but it is possible.

Reading, spending time with the likes of Dorothy Day and Mother Teresa, with Catherine Doherty, Father Zosima, Dante, Ivan Ilych, Kristin Lavransdatter (and many others), helps me to remember to put love first: love in action. And when I fail, which I do regularly, they remind me to wake up the next morning and try again. With God, all things are possible. I am given many opportunities every day to touch the living Christ in those I encounter. I don’t have to travel across the world to Kolkata to meet Jesus. I meet him every day in my wife and children. I meet him in my students and my coworkers. I meet him in the angry checkout clerk at the grocery store and even in the inconsiderate drivers on my commute. Are my eyes open to see him? Can I serve him when I see him? Even when I receive in return only coldness or ingratitude? Mother Teresa used to say, “Do you want to change the world? Go home and love your family.” That’s the hardest love of all. To be known and to know, and to love still.

Toward the end of my two-hour conversation with Miss Leah, she shared a story with me about another conversation she had around a different table. She was at lunch with a priest friend, and she confided in him that she was afraid to die. The priest was surprised and asked, “But, Leah, why?” She said that though she had tried to live her life for God, maybe she got it wrong… that all she had done was work in the restaurant. The priest reminded her of her family, and then he said, “But, Leah, don’t you know that you lived your life doing one of Jesus’ favorite things? Jesus loved to eat, and he loved to feed people. He feeds us today! He loved to meet them around the table and to dine with them. Leah, you have done the hard work of hospitality to feed people and—in your own way—to bring them closer to God. That is a great gift!” Indeed, it is. One worthy of imitation.

At the end of her autobiography, The Long Loneliness, Dorothy Day wrote a postscript that highlights the seeming ordinariness of God’s grace, of how God works in our lives. She writes it like a litany: “We were just sitting there talking” when this or that happened. “We were just sitting there talking when Peter Maurin came in... when lines of people began to form, saying, ‘We need bread’… [when] people moved in on us.” I think that’s what we need. I think that’s what I need. I need more “just sitting there talking.” Talking with you, with my family, with Miss Leah, with great books of the past and present, with the gospels, with Jesus. Good things happen when we’re just sitting there talking together. Perhaps if I can do that enough, I can become the kind of person who “lived as if the gospel were true.” Will you join me?

[This essay originally appeared in the Winter 2024 issue of Joie de Vivre. To purchase this issue or an annual subscription, click the “Subscribe” tab above.]

Jeff Young holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of St. Thomas (Houston). He is the author of Around the Table with The Catholic Foodie: Middle Eastern Cuisine (Liguori Publications, 2014) and of the Savoring Sundays column in Catholic Digest.