EASY TO APPROACH AND EASILY APPROACHES

5th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Mk 1:29-39

A person who is easy to approach is called in Tagalog “madaling lapitan”. A person who easily approaches is called in Tagalog “madaling lumapit”. Jesus is both. He is “madaling lapitan” and “madaling lumapit”. The Gospel today shows us these two traits of Jesus.

The whole town came crowding round the door where Jesus was, bringing to Him all who were sick and possessed by unclean spirits, and the following day everybody, according to Simon Peter and his companions, were looking for Him because Jesus was approachable. It was easy to reach Him and seek His favor. Anyone who sought Him out found Him. Anyone who asked anything from Him received. Anyone who knocked on His compassionate heart experienced a warm welcoming.

Nothing has changed since then. Jesus continues to be very much approachable, if not even more approachable to us than to His contemporaries. We may encounter Him through the sacraments, receive Him in the Eucharist, visit Him in the tabernacles of our churches, feel Him in our hearts, and embrace Him in our fellow human beings. By vanishing from our sight, Jesus became even more present to us! He has made Himself more available to us than to His contemporaries. But do we approach Him as much as we should?

The contemporaries of Jesus did not only find Jesus very much approachable; they also experienced Him always approaching them. It was easy for them to reach out to Jesus because Jesus is precisely always reaching out to them. They found Him because He would find them always. Fame and adulation in one place or another did not caused Jesus to be derailed in His mission of proclaiming the Kingdom of God by word and deed to as many of His contemporaries as possible. Thus, Jesus told Simon Peter and his companions in the Gospel today, “Let us go elsewhere, to the neighboring country towns, so that I can preach there too, because that is why I came.”

As He was the Good Shepherd of His own generation, so is He still our Good Shepherd seeking out the lost of today. He reaches out to us through the sacraments, the Scripture, and the Church. He continues to be found because He continues to search in our day and age. But do we allow Him to find and touch us?

There was no cordon sanitaire around Jesus before and He certainly does not want to build an army of bodyguards today. It is amazing that despite His great fame and power, Jesus was and still is very much within reach and is always reaching out. How different He is from us.

It is sad that fame and power can isolate those who enjoy and possess them. The more famous you are the less approachable you become. The more powerful you are the more bodyguards you need. It is quite hard to approach a celebrity, the chair of the board, a president of a nation, a high-ranking official, and, sometimes, even a priest or a bishop. Appointments have to be requested and secured; without which you can only dream about meeting them and bringing to them your concerns personally. Is it not a scandal that those who profess love and service to the people are the ones the people find most difficult to talk to?

Jesus is truly different: Madali natin Siyang lapitan at madali Siyang lumapit sa atin (“We easily approach Him and He easily approaches us”). He does not have a secretary to receive our requests for appointments. He does not have a screening committee to decide who can and who cannot meet Him. He does not have a delegate to do the reaching out for Him despite the immense demands of His mission.

The secret of Jesus must be in what happens between His being reachable and being reaching out. There seems to be a sandwich here, where in the middle that makes the sandwich tasty is Jesus’ time spent with the Father. As He went about with His public ministry, despite the load of His work for the Kingdom, the Gospel today paints for us a picture of Jesus communing with the Father. “In the morning, long before dawn,” the Gospel today describes Jesus, “He got up and left the house, and went off to a lonely place and prayed there.” He was and is always centered on the Father, not on Himself, not on the people who admire or even criticized Him. He was and is never attached to anything or anyone, except the Father. Thus, He was and is always available to all.

Jesus is far infinitely more important than any of us. What a shame if we make our selves less approachable and less approaching than He was before and He is today. What a lie if we are unreachable for and not reaching out to the people we heartbreakingly say we love and want to serve.

I end with a confession. Once a Carmelite nun told me, “My goodness, Fr. Bobby, I’ve been trying to catch you for years but to no avail! It is easier for me to get an appointment with the Pope than with you.” Well, she is a friend of Archbishop Pietro Marini, the Pope’s genial Master of Ceremonies. But her words hit me hard: there was truth in her complain. I started soul-searching and realized that the problem was that I was too busy not only for people but even for God. Indeed, it is when we are most available to God that we become more available to people.