The Chair O Peter

The Catholic Church has a feast day called, "The Chair of Peter."  When I first heard this, I wondered if this was some special feast about furniture.  Well, yes and no.  Is is a feast about dead Christians, especially Peter, who death date is not known.  The idea comes from a chair that sits empty at the table of a family who occupy the other chairs.  The empty chair is a reminder of the deceased who is not with us, but yet is with us in spirit.  So we have a chair for them.  They are not with us in "skin."  The chair reminds us that we suffer the loss of their voice, their touch, their smell.  This is the way we knew them.  There spirit lives, but we did not know them in spirit.  Whenever someone says to me, "Oh, they are happy and at peace with God," I take some solace, but I am not happy, because I want them in skin as I only knew them in skin.  We miss the flesh and blood presence and the empty chair reminds us of this.  Sympathy can only go so far.