Hospitality means a lot more more than meets the eye. It was a word that I had sometimes heard, mainly with reference to biblical texts. This does not mean that it was not put into practice, but simply that it was called by another name.

The first time I heard the name of Saint John of God was when I saw it written on a calendar on March 8. But when I began working at the Santa Águeda hospital I attended a number of meetings run by the Brothers for the employees and volunteers, where my curiosity was aroused to find out more about Juan Ciudad. I discovered that he was not a difficult Saint, or a person living an ascetical lifestyle that would be impossible to imitate. Quite the reverse.

Hospitality, in the sense of being a life-changing attitude, is one of the lessons that he has taught us. Only seeing his reaction to the words of John of Avila on that Feast of St Sebastian, I often ask myself how do I take the words that people around me address to me?

What greater hospitality could he show than to allow his own body to suffer the wounds caused by being misunderstood and rejected for being different, which led him to change his whole life to reach out to, and become involved with, the people in the greatest suffering and need in that 16th century Granada. Even though he surrounded himself with the most “select” people in society, and was considered a madman, he took no notice of it. And this is a stimulus to me when the patients come to me or I go to them, and discover in them a person suffering from the stigma of mental illness, and I call them by name and I allow myself to be transformed and “made to feel uncomfortable”. Just as when an expectant mother’s body, organs and mind and mood changes – this is what hospitality means: allowing oneself to be changed to reach out and receive another, and thereby be a prophet of hope in a more just, more wholesome, more human and more God-fearing world.