“Everywhere he entered, towns, cities, and villages, they brought the sick to the marketplaces …” (Mk. 6:53-56)

People immediately recognize Jesus. And they move to get close to him. People prefer a God who visits their cities, their squares, their roads. A God who is “close”, without borders, without conditions. A God who draws closer to their daily realities of suffering. and not so much a God to be sought out, who imposes a lot of rules and conditions to be “worthy” to be in his presence. A God who accepts them as they have been and as they are, without reproaching them, without making demands of them. A God who remains unconditionally at the side of those who need him most. A God that allows himself to be “touched” and that is “moved” by so much misery and need that He encounters. This is the God that Jesus makes known and makes present with his nearness. This is the Kingdom that He offers, and which seeks to free man from his sufferings.

Let us accept the invitation that the text makes to us: to approach these realities of loneliness, marginalization, and exclusion in our context…to touch, to listen, to console, to provide a little inner peace in the midst of suffering.