The empty chair

Katie van Schaijik | Feb 28, 2013

I always find Holy Saturday an especially imposing day, spiritually.  It's the thought of the empty Tabernacles all over the world.  The absent Presence.

I'm feeling something similar as I contemplate the sede vacante.  How different an empty chair is from other kinds of emptiness!  A chair is meant to hold a person.  And this is not just any chair, but a very paticular chair—a chair that represents a sacred office, and an unbroken line.

It's emptiness is awesome, in the truest sense of that word, which includes an element of "fear-inducing."

I'm glad it will be filled soon.  I'm also grateful for the way its period of emptiness fills out our sense of its fullness of meaning.