The Reheat, saith the Rites, is its own art and not a lesser one. Mark the rubric: the Ovenkeeper shall set the Oven low – not the roaring heat of the first bake, for the first bake is done and cannot be done again, and to blast the returned slice is to burn its edges while its heart stayeth cold, as it is written in the Rites, 4:6.
Beloved, this is for everyone standing near a return – theirs or thine own. The brother back after the estrangement; the friend out of rehab and terrified of thy hope; thyself, going home at Christmas to a table thou left loudly. The temptation is always the high heat: the great reconciling conversation, the everything-at-once, the demand that the years be accounted for by pudding. And the high heat burns the edges, every time, while the heart stays cold.
Go low and slow instead. A cup of tea that mentions nothing. A message that requires no reply. The same small kindness, repeated, unremarked, until the crust remembers how to crisp and the cheese remembers how to stretch. And if the returner falls cold again – for some do, and relapse is a fridge, not a grave – hear the doctrine: the fridge is not a tomb but a waiting; and the second warmth is not the first warmth, but it is warmth, and it is enough.
Let no parish speak of “the lapsed” as of the dead, but as of slices wrapped against the drying, awaiting only a hand upon the door and a low and patient heat. Keep the heat patient. Keep the hand ready. Amen – and pass the pizza.