Nearness and Encounter

There are two things that define the people of God as we respond to the call of Jesus and assume the full mantle of the Great Commission to “make disciples of all nations”: nearness and encounter.  That’s how Pope Francis sees it anyway.

Surely we can draw up strategic plans and organizational grids (many of us may be doing just that as we gear up for another year of ministry/life/work/parenthood). But it is not the efficiencies of Modernity that have broken through the busyness of our age and the distraction of our hearts. It is God’s intimacy, revealed in a humble babe. It is a lowly servant that has transformed us. “He is the ‘God who is near’ to his people,” Pope Francis proclaimed in a recent address to the South American episcopate, “a nearness which culminates in the Incarnation.  He is the God who goes forth to meet his people.”[1]

People aren’t reached by programs. Kids (and adults alike) are reached by people. It’s being there. It’s showing up. It’s a phone call in a sea of emails. It’s a hand-written note in a world of texts. It’s a hug when only a hug will do. It’s going out and taking risks. It’s being shot down a time or two. It’s offering your heart with all the vulnerability of Jesus on the Cross. It’s laying your life down for the sake of a friend.

All too often we exchange the mission for the institution of the Church today. No doubt, a natural process of institutionalization is necessary to make universally accessible the life-giving kernel of God’s transformative power. The institution preserves and magnifies the mission. Yet when maintenance overtakes mission as the sole priority of the Church, our message becomes stale and our witness empty. To borrow Francis’ words, the Church “stops being a bride and ends up being an administrator; from being a servant, she becomes an ‘inspector’.”[2] All the while, kids, oblivious to all of our plans and procedures, councils and commissions, stand at the fray waiting for someone to step in and be the body of Christ, to draw near as a sacramental embodiment of God, to sanctify their existence by actually saying “hello.”

It’s not a business plan, it's an abiding presence. We are not “keepers of the aquarium” but “fishers of men [and women].”[3] We are lights unto the world, icons of the living God. And when we draw near to others in tenderness, mercy and personal friendship, we not only imitate God but we participate in the tender, merciful and thoroughly personal being-in-action, being-in-relation, triune reality we call God. The Incarnation has brought a “revolution of tenderness,” Pope Francis reminds us, one that can reach the lonely and the neglected, the rebellious and the reticent, the broken and the proud.

It is this nearness, this personal encounter with our fellow brothers and sojourning sisters, that makes room for an encounter with God. It is often the tangible love of another human being that opens the door to the eternal love of God. That’s why relationships of nearness are so important in the Church today. We see it in the life of Pope Francis and know it to be true in our own lives. Isn’t it time we go out, draw near and reveal the God whose love draws all of us into nearness and encounter?

“We loved you so much that we were delighted to share with you not only the gospel of God but our lives as well, because you had become so dear to us.”

1 Thessalonians 2:8

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[1] Pope Francis, “Address to the Coordinating Committee of CELAM,” Sumare Study Center: Rio de Janiero, July 28, 2013.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Mt 4:19.