Fr Robert Hendrickson

Dear Friends in Christ,

The other day, our oldest was the server for the mid-day Eucharist. On Tuesdays the healing Eucharist is in the Chapel of the Nativity. On the other days of the week it is in the Benedict Chapel (the baptistery).

Now those of you who have been there for the Eucharist will remember that the Altar is situated in the more traditional manner, fixed to the wall, so that the priest faces the same direction with the people toward the Altar while celebrating.

My first twelve years in the Episcopal Church were at parishes at which this was the only way Holy Communion was celebrated. It always made intuitive sense to me to be joining the priest facing the same direction. The common critique is that the priest is turning her back on the people. I can assure you that no priest celebrating facing the same direction as the people has ever thought of it as turning their back but rather as turning toward God together.

Modern liturgists have critiqued this practice of fifteen centuries and more because we modern folk like to imagine that somehow the Holy Spirit was silent for nearly two millennia and is only now showing us the right way to do everything!

Anyhow, Nikolas has not been in a place where this is the norm. After the service the other day he said, “I like it better this way because it feels like we’re doing it together.” He intuitively picked up on the essence of that liturgical form.

The real lesson I took away though was not about the form itself. It was actually about the willingness of kids to look at new things in new ways and remind us of what we might not see. So often we get locked into one way of doing things in Church. And there’s huge value to that stability. But sometimes we need to step into a new place, space, or experience and just be open to what we might find even, and perhaps especially, when it jars us from our preconceptions and preconditions.

We need that curiosity of children because God is always revealing something fresh to those with hearts and ears and eyes ready to receive grace upon grace. What Nikolas saw was mired in decades and decades of being told something was the right or wrong way. He was simply present and took the time to just be and pray and let God do the rest.

We so often bring stiff knees when asked to kneel, hardened hearts when asked to pray, deaf ears when called upon to listen, bitter tongues when asked for charity, and so much more. We bring all of our reticences and resistance when God just asks us to be present. To be in his Presence. To let him still speak. May we encounter the new with the hearts of children and may we allow our hearts to be led to new possibilities even when we imagine we know the only right way already.

Yours in Christ,

—Fr Robert