The week of Christ the King is a strange one anyway. What does the feast mean, the readings about the end of time, the judgement of the world, things being rolled away like a scroll. Very often, with the compassion borne from knowing that the tragedy that befalls one could befall me, I detailed the pain in this world and how often we limp toward glory. The readings of Christ the King are end time readings of a world that is being ravished. But this year the ravishment has come close to me and my mother has died. I can barely believe I typed those words. Christ the King was fifth day of her shiva and I was and in many ways am still raw. It makes the feast of triumph and the providence of God even more confusing.
Of course, Christ the King is Christ the Shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep. The image of Christ the King is always tied to bread and wine offered on the altar of life, body and blood. Christians triumphant or wishing to be in triumph painted the image never seen in the actual Jesus. He was killed. He died. Now that I am in the eighth day of a mourning for someone who will not come back, the not quite three days mourning sounds cheap. If we seize on the story of Jesus coming back, we must understand that in many ways, no matter what your belief, he never came back. No matter how one interprets the resurrection, to really understand the grief of the disciples, one must realize in some ways, the same way my mother and your mother and your husband and your child will never come back, the Jesus they knew was cracked like a grain of wheat, gone. And so shall we be. And to find the joy and the eternal life in this most grim mystery is the heart of the Cross. This mystery of Christ the King and the rending of all things gives way, in the end, to the tiny mystery of Advent.
Alongside this is the tender and blessed feast of Thanksgiving. Tender because even on the first one the people celebrating it limped toward it from a year of death and suffering. Tender because I am celebrating it on the ninth day of my mother’s death with a family that honors it as their grandmother’s death day. Tender because we come from so much that has been heart and find joy and gratitude in each other. We think of those who are gone and those who will be gone and remember those times past and the year grows a little grey, a little colder. Tender.
And it is blest because it is the one holiday that is a holy day and the one holy day that belongs to know religion, but finds the faith, whatever that faith is, in all of us. Thanksgiving is based upon the flimsiest of prayers which is also the foundation of all prayers, “Thanks.” A thankful heart. We do not know why we were preserved for this moment, We remember those who were not, and we continue on the way. I do not know if we thank “God”. God has a way of letting us down. God is inexplicable enough to be irresponsible. A person called God let my mother die and left such a mess. A person called God let the world be ravished with disease. This person is an underachiever, and he is a convenient thing we all need to shout at, rail at, perhaps ultimately walk away from. Thanksgiving is more about finding the road to joy inside of you. Without thanks, we have no joy and without joy, we don't have much. But there is something else we whisper to, something small, that keeps us going, keeps us smiling, puts joy in us and color in bleak days, wipes away tears and exists in the goodness of those around us, in the strength we didn’t know we had. Though we are bruised and broken, confounded and hurt, we whisper thank you to this little something, this tiny secret, and hallow it, and recognize that smallness for what it is.
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