As a Professor at the Centro Universitario de Ciencias de la Salud San Rafael – Nebrija, I have the sensation every day that Hospitality can be experienced and expressed in many different ways.

Contributing to the education of others is always a task entailing great responsibility. It requires us to impart knowledge, but above all to stimulate, to kindle a flame, to accompany people in doubt and try to provide enlightened replies, even if they are only partial. The University must once again become a place in which pursue the quest for Truth and to accompany the students’ growth. 

Even though it might appear to be an area removed from the priorities of the Order which is wholly dedicated to the provision of care, the possibility to train medical personnel and to do so with certain specific values – ‘inoculating’ the vocation par excellence – contemplating the transcendent dimension of human beings and inviting them to love without being bashful is one more way of sharing and spreading the charism. Every person who graduates in a Hospitaller Order centre, is and must be, a seed of hospitality generously scattered widely.

Hospitality still remains – as always, but more than ever before – topically relevant. Because, like Beauty for Saint Augustine, Hospitality is always ancient and always new; for it rejoices in its “timeless present”, to cite the Spanish poet, Luis Cernuda. Because it is always topically relevant to the soothing hands of God. And young people, students today and professionals throughout their lives, fully deserve to be invited to live and practise it.