Have you ever considered just how many encounters you have in one day? Whether in person, on the phone, on Zoom, through text or email, our life is filled with conversations. Many of these moments are benign and mundane, centering on the weather or what might be next on our calendar.

But then there are those unforgettable encounters that tug at our heart and get us thinking, perhaps even to the point of sharing with others. I had one such occasion not too long ago. I was invited to a parish dinner hosted by the Knights of Columbus. When it came time to eat, I was at a table with one of our permanent deacons, who happens to be a professional pilot. He flies for a corporate bank headquartered in Canada. The twin-engine, eight-passenger jet he flies is housed in Erie, Pennsylvania.

Much of our conversation at the table focused on what it is like to pilot a plane. The deacon shared a story that eventually found its way into my confirmation homily for this past year. One evening, he was flying out of Jacksonville, Florida, en route to Erie. As he began to level off the plane at 30,000 feet, he was struck by what he saw. There were streams of light darting all through the sky. What he was seeing was lightning. The problem, however, was that there was no sense of this light show on his radar. His preflight weather check indicated an uneventful evening with no storms or lightning.

The pilot was so confounded that he reached out to air traffic control, hoping that they could shed some light on this mystery. The air traffic controller said, “What you are seeing is 60,000 feet in the air and three states beyond you.” The moral of the story is that what seems so close is so far away.

And yet, as I shared in my confirmation homily for the benefit of those struggling with their faith in God and the Church, what seems so far is so close. This is so true when it comes to our God. He is ever present! The psalmist acknowledges this closeness of God when he says, “Behind and before you encircle me / and rest your hand upon me” (Ps 139:5). St. Paul notes this same sense when he says, “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor present things, nor future things, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom 8:38-39).

Pope Francis has made this theme of God’s closeness an integral part of his papacy. Time and again, he has preached about the nearness and tenderness of God. In “The Joy of the Gospel,” Pope Francis invites all Christians to a renewed encounter with Jesus. He says, “The Lord does not disappoint those who take this risk; whenever we take a step toward Jesus, we come to realize that he is already there, waiting for us with open arms” (No. 3).

How humbling it is that the Lord Jesus uses us priests as his instruments of nearness. Even in our humanness the Lord Jesus utilizes us to manifest his tender and compassionate presence to the world. Whether at the altar, in the confessional, anointing the sick and dying, presiding at funerals, greeting the faithful before holy Mass, leading a meeting or just in conversation with another, we radiate the closeness of God. St. John Vianney, the patron saint of parish priests, said it this way: “The priesthood is the love of the heart of Jesus. When you see a priest, think of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

When people look at us, what do they see? Do they see Christ? What do we see when we look at our brother priests? What do we see when we look at ourselves?

May our experience of celebrating holy Mass open our eyes every day to behold the presence of Christ. May we truly, in the words St. Augustine shared in an Easter sermon, “become what we receive” and manifest, especially to those who feel so far removed among us, the nearness of God.

BISHOP DAVID J. BONNAR, editor of The Priest, is bishop of the Diocese of Youngstown.