Fr Robert Hendrickson

Dear Friends in Christ,

One of the things that the Holy Spirit does is reveal the truth of things and their potential.

In Baptism, the Spirit reveals the truth of God’s love in Christ. In Communion the Spirit reveals the Presence of Christ.

We think of the Spirit as an agent of power and a force for reconciliation. And that may be the greatest revelation the Spirit offers: that we all may yet be one. 

That is the greatest truth and potential of the human family: that we all may be one. So much gets in the way, though. Our blinded sight puts much in the path of unity. There are the obvious things like race or nationality. There are other things that are fairly obvious, too, like class or creed.

But there are others, too, that are harder. These tend to do with our perception of the world. 

Our sense of scarcity.
Our fear of change.
Our need for security.
Our capacity for hope.
Our desire for more.
Our need for validation. 

Each of these and countless more shape the way we see the world and, more importantly, shape what we think is possible for our relationship with those we love and those we can’t imagine loving, too.

They also shape how wide the circle is that we cast when we imagine who our neighbor is. If we’re afraid and see others as competitors for scarce resources, attention, or reward then it becomes much harder to imagine how we may be one. 

It not only becomes harder to imagine but also harder to live into. This becomes especially true when our ease comes at the expense of someone else’s lacking the necessities of life, when our competition is won and we hardly realize the costs others have paid or will pay.

Maybe climate change is an example. So many have won the industrial race but so many more will yet pay a price we may hardly see or notice. 

This is where the Spirit can help guide us and help us see rightly. See not only that we may yet be one but also see others for who they truly are, the beloved of God too. 

William Temple once put it this way, 

“The world, as we live in it, is like a shop window into which some mischievous person has got overnight, and shifted all the price-labels so that the cheap things have the high price-labels on them and the really precious things are priced low. We let ourselves be taken in. Repentance means getting those price labels back in the right place.” William Temple (1881-1944), Christian Faith and Life

This is the work, he says, of “a complete re-evaluation of things we are inclined to think good.”

money and wealth
power
force
the use of violence
vengeance
pride
fame
individualism
self-gratification
self-defense

This is where we keep up our prayers for the Spirit’s intercession to help us with that re-evaluation and to help us see rightly again.

It’s the work of a lifetime but it is the work by which we might find ourselves seeing the world with Christ’s deeper love and finding that it is yet possible for us all to be one. 

Yours in Christ,

—Fr Robert