Many people are surprised to learn that the best selling poet in the United States today is a 13th-century Persian mystic named Jalaluddin Rumi. 

Father Ben Berinti, pastor of Immaculate Conception Catholic Church in Melbourne, printed Rumi’s poem “The Guest House” in the Sept. 6 issue of the church bulletin. The poem is the inspiration for Berinti’s weekly essay in his column “Paper Clips.”

In the poem, Rumi encourages people to start every day with the welcoming attitude of an innkeeper. Good or bad, happy or sad— welcome them all.

Berinti is a member of the Missionaries of the Precious Blood, who are known for gracious hospitality at their residences around the world. But what happens when God calls on us to welcome the guests that we dread? A cancer diagnosis, a lost job, financial hardship, a marital betrayal— and the most dreaded surprise guest of 2020, of course, COVID-19.

“I have struggled during these nauseating corona-months, as I try to figure out (unsuccessfully thus far) how to see this uninvited ‘guest’ as something that could, in the end, lead to something transformative—not only for me personally, but for our ways of life,” Berinti said. … “Do all unwelcome guests end up providing a teaching moment, a new perspective, changed attitudes and behaviors?”

“The question becomes, ‘How do I/we relate to this unexpected event, this party-crashing guest?’” he said. Rather than trying to simply tolerate illness or tragedy or disruption, Rumi is asking us “to find ways to live more fully in light of this latest reminder of the fragility of life that has burst its way into our safety and security.”

“The challenge I find in our present spiritual struggle (and, indeed, it is deeply spiritual, because it is so all-encompassing), is how to recognize the seeds, the invitation to encounter God, who refines us in our suffering,” Berinti said.

In the following passage from Isaiah, God gives us his explanation.

“See, I have refined you, but not like silver; I have tested you in the furnace of adversity. For my own sake, for my own sake, I do it” (NRSV Isaiah 48:10)," Fr. Berinti quotes.

“This is still a work in progress for me,” he concludes, “but one worth grappling with.”