What is our motive for showing hospitality to strangers?

Hospitality to strangers is an essential virtue in the life of a Christian, and so the scholar Tertullian includes this among his reasons why a Christian woman should not marry a pagan man, for that would prevent her from showing hospitality to travelers in her home. The scholar Origen says that Christians ought to show hospitality to strangers in the same spirit with which Abraham received the three traveling strangers at Mamre, washed their feet, and anointed them with oil.¹¹³² And St. Justin says, “We who hated and destroyed one another, and on account of their different manners would not live with men of a different tribe, now, since the coming of Christ, live familiarly with them.”¹¹³³