Fr Robert Hendrickson

Dear Friends in Christ,

Last night, Nikolas and I went to the Ralph Votapek piano concert which was the inaugural concert on the generously donated Steinway piano. It was marvelous.

The pianist was the first gold medal winner at the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in 1962. His playing last night was masterful and moving. It was incredible to watch his hands fly across the keys as they drew sound so beautifully from each key. At times the pitch was feverish and at others lush and drawn out.

Watching him, 51 years later, pour his energy and skill into those few minutes was a gift. Decades of practice and passion came across in so many ways.

It put me to mind of a priest I knew in Connecticut, Fr Ken Thomas. He was in his late eighties when I first met him. He had been something of a force of nature his whole ministry. He was renowned as a preacher and pastor. By the time I met him, his health was in serious decline.

His hands had stiffened to the point where he could no longer celebrate the Eucharist which was a painful development in his spiritual life. He told me that it felt like the cruelest betrayal of nature. He also said it was the change that truly made him a priest. When I asked him how this was so, he dug around in his rumpled black suit coat which had long ago faded to purplish grey.

Out of his pocket he pulled out a tattered weekly planner. He said, “you know I pray for you, right?” I mumbled something and took this as one would take someone offering a bit of a kind word. Then he looked at me more intensely and said, “No, I pray for you. Every Tuesday at 3:00.”

He opened his planner and there, in ten minute increments, were hundreds of names scrawled across every day and every hour of the week. Every day was broken up by the prayers he offered for everyone he knew and cared for — those living and those long departed. His whole life was prayer. He said this experience of having all of his waking hours be one long, lovingly offered prayer had truly made him a priest just when he wondered what it meant to be one if he couldn’t serve at the Altar.

It was his way of responding to nature’s betrayal — to lean more deeply into the love of God and of those he cared for.

I watched Mr Votapek last night, half a century after that Van Cliburn medal, still pouring himself into the work he loved. I remembered Fr Thomas, praying fervently even as he felt his health and stamina falter. I gave thanks for those I’ve known who have given themselves over to their great loves and lived lives so shaped by that love.

I wonder if I will find myself, in the not so distant future, with my life shaped by love. Will you? Have you? If not, then what is stopping us today and always?

Yours in Christ,

Fr Robert