Each one of us has, at some point, experienced what it means to be a stranger. Sometimes it happens on a journey to a place where we do not speak the language or understand the customs. More often, it happens in more familiar ways: standing alone at a gathering, entering a new workplace or encountering unknown people in the checkout line. In our digitally interconnected world, even the meaning of stranger has become more complicated. With a swipe of a finger, we can encounter the lives of people thousands of miles away, seeing their faces, homes, families, triumphs and tragedies in real time. We have never been more capable of encountering people we do not know.
For Christians, the moral obligation toward the stranger is clear. How we welcome the stranger reveals what kind of people—and what kind of community—we are. Jesus repeatedly identifies himself with the stranger and insists upon love of neighbor, even when that neighbor is an enemy or social outcast. LGBTQ people have experienced being treated as “strange” by our families, churches or first communities, while also discovering new communities in which we ourselves have learned to extend welcome to others. This is one reason Homer’s Odyssey remains so resonant for LGBTQ Catholics. Beneath its familiar story of homecoming, the epic is deeply concerned with the stranger: who receives them, who rejects them and what those responses reveal about the communities doing the welcoming. Christopher Nolan’s new adaptation offers an opportunity to reconsider these ancient questions through a contemporary lens.
At its surface, The Odyssey is an epic about homecoming. Odysseus returns to Ithaca after 20 years of war and wandering, hoping to reclaim his household, his kingdom and his place within the world he left behind. Yet the translator Emily Wilson draws attention to a deeper question beneath this familiar narrative of return: not simply whether Odysseus will find his way home, but whether people know how to receive those who arrive without power, status or certainty.
This is one reason Homer’s Odyssey remains so resonant for LGBTQ Catholics. Beneath its familiar story of homecoming, the epic is deeply concerned with the stranger.
The poem’s moral imagination is structured in large part around hospitality. The ancient Greek concept of xenia—the sacred relationship between host and guest—establishes obligations toward the stranger before the stranger’s identity or intentions are even known. Food, shelter and protection precede interrogation. This obligation was not merely a social convention. The stranger stood under the protection of Zeus as guardian of guests and strangers. To mistreat the stranger, therefore, was not simply to violate etiquette; it was to violate a divinely sanctioned moral order.
Throughout The Odyssey, hospitality becomes a test of character. The Cyclops’s treatment of Odysseus and his companions represents a grotesque rejection of xenia, while the suitors’ abuse of Odysseus’ household similarly demonstrates their moral character. The question is never only whether the stranger deserves hospitality. Homer’s poem repeatedly asks what the host’s response to the stranger reveals about the host.
Meanwhile, the Christian tradition is deeply concerned with the stranger. The Hebrew Scriptures command Israel to treat the foreigner living among them “as the citizen among you” and to love the stranger as oneself (Lv 19:33–34). In the Gospel of Matthew Jesus declares, “I was a stranger and you invited me in” (Mt 25:35), identifying the treatment of vulnerable outsiders with the treatment of Christ himself. Hebrews commands Christians not to neglect hospitality because some have “entertained angels without knowing it” (Heb 13:2). The parable of the Good Samaritan offers another reversal: the outsider becomes the neighbor by choosing to show mercy
LGBTQ Catholics are not strangers to Catholicism at all; rather, we can experience the painful paradox of being treated as strangers within our own tradition.
Christianity therefore transforms hospitality from a social obligation into a theological practice. The stranger is not merely someone whom we should tolerate. Welcoming and loving the stranger is one of the most profound ways that we encounter Christ.
LGBTQ Catholics have particular reason to take this seriously. Many queer and transgender Catholics know the experience of standing at the threshold of a community that formed them, wondering whether they will be received in love or turned away in shame. We are often not strangers to Catholicism at all; rather, we can experience the painful paradox of being treated as strangers within our own tradition. Yet there is an inherent tension in claiming to welcome people while simultaneously treating an essential part of who they are as grounds for exclusion.
That tension also colors how we might understand contemporary debates surrounding Nolan’s adaptation. When Elon Musk criticized the film’s casting of the Black actress Lupita Nyong’o and the transgender actor Elliot Page, the controversy quickly became an argument about historical authenticity, cultural representation and the preservation of “Western civilization.” Yet treating Homer’s poem as though it were a fixed cultural artifact misunderstands the history of the poem itself—and ignores the fictional nature of a story about Zeus, Athena and other mythological characters.
As Wilson observes, The Odyssey was already an act of adaptation, reshaping older mythic traditions through the relatively new technology of writing. For nearly 3,000 years, successive generations have inherited Homer by interpreting and transforming him anew. Virgil, Dante, James Joyce, Derek Walcott, Margaret Atwood, Madeline Miller, Wilson and now Nolan all participate in this continuing tradition. The poem has endured because its themes resonate with new eyes and new perspectives.
The church’s claim about human dignity begins with the conviction that every person bears the imago Dei, the image of God. Pope Francis repeatedly placed encounter with people on the margins at the center of his pastoral writing and practice, while Pope Leo XIV has likewise repeatedly emphasized the universal dignity of the human person. The stranger, then, becomes a gift.
For LGBTQ Catholics, this may be one of the most important lessons we can draw from The Odyssey. Having experienced what it means to be regarded as strange, we can recognize the gift of the stranger.
For LGBTQ Catholics, this may be one of the most important lessons we can draw from The Odyssey. Having experienced what it means to be regarded as strange, we can more readily recognize both the dignity and the gift of the stranger. Strangeness, after all, is a matter of perspective; the person who appears foreign or threatening to one community may be loved and cherished by another. Christ challenges precisely these limited ways of seeing, calling us to recognize the dignity of every person within the expansive horizon of divine love.
Homer’s poem continues to endure because it asks questions that no generation has finished answering. Who belongs? Who is welcome? What obligations do we owe the person who arrives at our threshold? And what does our answer reveal about us?
For Christians, and especially for LGBTQ Catholics, the answer is ultimately inseparable from the Gospel: We encounter the dignity of the stranger because we believe God is already there. The question, then, is not simply whether there is room at the table. It is what kind of people we become when we make room for everyone.
