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od asks:
“Where are you?” We think we do well by answering: “Here I am, ready to do your will; not with my own strengths nor for my own satisfaction, but with your strength and for your pleasure.” And God would be happy with that.
But then, comes another question: “Where is your brother?”
We know wherefrom that question comes; we know what happened before and the dialogue that followed. What interests us now is
this question. It’s an important question.
It comes from Someone of whom there’s no greater. And there’s no way to escape from the answer, since He knows it already…
This question creates a problem for us. We thought we had some brothers and some sisters, and that’s it. And the others? God is not to be appeased. God asks a question with
almost no bounds. It forces us to go look for the brother and the sister. Or else, we cannot give an answer and we cannot go before his presence.
Look: this question is posted on the church door!
If you don’t take your brother or your sister, you do not enter. This is terrible! God even gets angry with us! It seemed so simple to go into church, to finally find myself in the peace and the tranquility of friendship with the Father…, and now I find that, if I’m not with my brothers and sisters, he does not know me and closes the door on my face.
What to do? I must find out who and where is my brother, my sister. In a particular way, the non-Christian, the foreigner, the one who does not know that God loves them. I must keep an eye on them, not lose sight of them. Or else, I’d be lost, too.
This question allows me to enter God’s own heart, who relies on me to take care of his sons and daughters, my brothers and sisters. It is the question of a father who is worried: I sent you out to play together and you came back alone? Where is your brother?
This question lets me enter into myself, discover my own identity, which is incomplete without my brother or sister. If I return before God alone, I am no longer I. He sees me only together with. My brother, my sister is part of me and I am part of them.
What to do? I must find out who and where is my brother, my sister. In a particular way, the non-Christian, the foreigner, the one who does not know that God loves them. I must keep an eye on them, not lose sight of them. Or else, I’d be lost, too. And when I present myself before God, I must be able to give him the answer he expects: “Dad, here is my brother. He is here, in my heart. I know who he is, I’ve found him. Now he is a bit lost, but you’ll see that he will come home soon. I ask you for him, every day. Tell me, please: what else can I do for him?”
This is the first lesson: my homework, or better, so that I may go homework to listen with the heart to the question God asks me and give him the answer he expects; to present him the brothers and sisters I have found out to be mine, entrusted to me that I may lead them to him; to talk with him about them every day in prayer and ask him what more would God concretely suggest I do for them.
Surely, to explain the question is not more forceful that the question itself:
“Where is your brother?”
(From Xaverian Mission Newsletter)