The Empty Chair
Updated: Sep 2
“Sir, what you commanded has been done, and still there is room.”
Luke 14:22
The chair is still there. Pushed in slightly, or left at an angle. No one has moved it since the last time it was used.
You notice it more than you expected to. An empty chair has a particular kind of presence. It does not ask for attention, yet it holds the shape of someone who is not there.
Some chairs stay empty only for an hour. Others remain that way for much longer. A place at the table. A seat by the window. The chair in the corner of a room that no longer needs to be filled.
Jesus once spoke of a banquet and of places that were still waiting to be taken. He also knew the weight of a room after someone had left it. The Gospels do not describe the furniture, but they never treat absence as a small thing. He sat at table with people who would not stay. He returned to a house where a friend had died. After the Cross, his own friends sat in a locked room and felt how large a missing place can be.
Most of the emptiness we live with is ordinary. It does not announce itself with drama. It is simply there in the middle of the day: a name not spoken, a cup not set out, a chair that still faces the same way.
You do not have to fill the chair. You do not have to explain it. You only have to let it be what it is for as long as it needs to be. Some absences are meant to be carried, not solved.
Christ is not only the host who wants the empty places filled. He is also the one who does not rush grief. At Mass a table is prepared, and there is still room. That is a promise. At the same time the liturgy makes space for the people who are not here: the dead we name, the sick who cannot come, the ones whose chair at home is the first thing we see when we return. The mystery we celebrate does not wipe the chair away. It places that absence in front of God, where it can be held without being denied.
When you leave the room, the chair will still be there. For now, that is part of the truth.