Fr Robert Hendrickson

Dear Friends in Christ,

I just re-read the final email I got from a saintly parishioner who has died this past week. I then read a string of correspondence he and I have had over the last 4+ years. In every note, even when he had questions or wanted to challenge something, I was struck by his immense kindness and his genuine desire to listen and take in new information even as he gently offered his own take.

As I read this chain of communication I thought about just how depressing it is that simple courtliness is such a lost virtue. Now there’s a churlishness in the air that is celebrated and rewarded with money, votes, and power. Where once we elevated people of dignity and grace now we seem to have found those to be marks of weakness.

If anything, it makes me realize how much the values of Christ, the marks of Christian humility and virtue, are just so much more despised now than I realized. What good is faith if it comes with a cruel insistence that it is the only way? What good is piety if it is paired with mockery for those who struggle and doubt? What good is certainty if it means we will never see with another’s eyes or even hear their voice let alone listen?

Christ is sure of who he is and calls us to be sure of it. Yet, he also calls us to a love of our neighbor that necessitates a kind of gentle and loving confidence in his call to love. It’s a confidence that we are loved and also a confidence in the hope that love doesn’t demand that we prove we’re right but that we prove we love too. In a society riven by division it seems that courtliness and gentleness of heart may be what we most need when we realize it least.

Yours in Christ,

Fr Robert