Fr Robert Hendrickson

Dear Friends in Christ,

The Book of Common Prayer offers the Episcopal view of the Eucharist in the Exhortation on page 316, “Beloved in the Lord: Our Savior Christ, on the night before he suffered, instituted the Sacrament of his Body and Blood as a sign and pledge of his love, for the continual remembrance of the sacrifice of his death, and for a spiritual sharing in his risen life. For in these holy Mysteries we are made one with Christ, and Christ with us; we are made one body in him, and members one of another.”


All of this is offered and expected in the act of the Eucharist. The very words we use at the crux of the liturgy declare its intent, "Do this in remembrance of me."

What are we called to remember?


Do we come to the Altar knowing that Christ offered this Sacrament on the night he was betrayed – as his Passion was to commence – so that we could evermore find his Presence?


Do the come to the Altar see this as a sign and pledge of that Love?


Do we long to to remember continually his sacrifice?


Are we desiring a spiritual sharing in his risen life?


Are we seeking and hoping to be one with Christ?

To be one Body with Him and members of one another?


Are we being honest - fully open and deeply humble - about the hope and risk of the Eucharist?

It is a risk for it asks us to offer all that we are so that we can be transformed into all that Christ calls us to be.

The Eucharist is not a right. It is a gift of responsibility.

It is a call to a life of holy witness, transformation, sacrifice, hope, striving, and ultimately of Resurrection. God’s radical welcome is simply this – come and die. Come and be re-born. A Church of radical welcome will preach, teach, and live in the shadow and light of this radical promise.


May we always come together with the hope of living ever more fully into the radical welcome of Christ — into the radical hope shared as such a gift with us.

Yours in Christ,

Fr Robert