Day 6 of the Novena to Saint Joseph
God Welcomes Us Today… Hurry! Reconcile with your brother!
With Ezekiel, walk the ways of a full life in God. Its paths lie through your sister and your brother!
In this sixth day of our Novena, Ezekiel comes to encourage us to allow ourselves to be welcomed by the mercy of God, who takes pleasure in our conversion and our return to Him.
The Lord encourages us, awaits us, but at the same time He stops us at the threshold to His sanctuary. Do you long for life, the life of God? Yes! Then “Hurry! Reconcile with your brother!” (Matthew 5:20-26) What is this Sanctuary where God welcomes us? The heart of your brother or your sister, especially one who causes you pain. And the most beautiful part is that the Lord is waiting for us in the face of a tiresome, easily offended, harsh brother or sister…in whom we can recognize the presence of Jesus, abandoned on the cross.
From the Jerusalem Community Rule of Life:
The search for God, the one thing necessary, takes place through human beings, the image of God the Body of Christ and the Temple of the Spirit. In this impermanent world God alone suffices: but God came into the world and he has put us in it too. Christ carried on an unceasing struggle with the world’s outrages and yet with an ever deepening incarnation in the heart of everyday reality. Hence, in your monastic vocation, you are also called to follow and serve him and seek God’s face exactly there where he is to be found: which is at the heart of the world, where you must continue fighting the same battle that he fought. (no. 136)
