Fr Robert Hendrickson

Dear Friends in Christ,

I recently started trying to learn how to use a 3D printer. It takes a spool of plastic thread and heats that to a point where the thread can be laid down one thin layer at a time until the printer has made something out of it.

So far I’ve made a rocket, a gummy bear, and a cat. These are pretty simple entry level designs.

There is a lot of preparation that goes into this that begins well before the machine ever starts laying down the material. You have to level the bed it is printing on with these tiny screws. You need to ensure an air conditioning vent is not pointed toward the machine lest it cool the material too quickly. You need to ensure that the nozzle of the extruded is the thickness of a piece of paper from the bed where it prints. You need to wipe down the print surface with alcohol so the material will adhere properly.

There are many, many more steps than this, too, before you can hit the start button. There’s a program to learn, wiring to figure out, measurements to calculate, and more.

The challenge I find is that if any one of these steps gets missed then the rest of the build will fail. At some point or another the lack of preparation results in either a collapse or mangling or the like.

I’ve come to look at these steps like prayer. Our lives are built one prayer at a time. Each one of them strengthens our trust in and reliance on God. Each one focuses our hearts and minds on the needs of others. Each one builds up our sense of God’s action in us and in the world.

When we don’t pray it might seem like a small thing. But each missed prayer creates a kind of spiritual weakness or vulnerability where we might find, eventually, that the preparation and work we’ve done simply won’t support the weight of the human condition. Christ came into the world because the human condition could not be salvaged, secured, or saved by us alone.

It’s an awareness of that need that always lies at the heart of prayer. There are essentially two prayers. The first is Thank You. The second is I’m Sorry.

Those two, gratitude and contrition, form the latticework of our spiritual lives. Each prayer we make that further grounds us in those virtues will strengthen us and create in us the framework by which others come to see Christ revealed.

If a missed prayer is a little thing then let us remember the power of compound interest—one act of gratitude and forgiveness builds upon the next. Each little step grounds us in the sure and certain love of God so that whatever we build in our lives will be fixed on the sure foundation of Christ.

Yours in Christ,

—Fr Robert