Bulletins
May 27, 2018
Download the Bulletin as a PDFMemorial Day was originally known as Decoration Day, a day to bring flowers to graves and honor the dead. As the unofficial start of summer is also occasions my reminder about how we decorate our living bodies. Next week when we celebrate Corpus Christi I will offer some more annual thoughts about the virtue of reverence with respect to the Body, Blood, Soul & Divinity of Jesus Christ.
Our bodies are sacred. We worship the Lord with our bodies as well as our souls. Prostrating. Kneeling. Standing. In silence and in song. With arms outstretched and with hands over our faces. Our souls adorned with virtue and our bodies attired with the virtue of modesty.
How would you dress if you knew you would be sitting next to someone who would be engaged in meditation that you do not want to distract? How should we dress when we are praying with each other?
The basilicas and churches of the Holy See still enforce strictly a simple dress code: cover your knees and your shoulders. Since some activewear would meet those criteria it bears mentioning that skin-tight clothing is not really suitable for polite company, let alone going to Church.
Dressing appropriately is not the same as dressing expensively. Besides, expensive clothes are not necessarily modest. In the course of praising St. John the Baptist, Jesus mentions that “those who are gorgeously appareled and live in luxury are in kings' courts” (Luke 7,25) yet He also tells the parable of the man expelled from the banquet for failing to wear a wedding garment (Matthew 22,1-14). St. Paul’s letter to St. Timothy mentions that Christian women ought to “adorn themselves modestly and sensibly in seemly apparel” (1Timothy 2,9). The very word “modesty” indicates that being modest is the opposite of flaunting our physical attributes.
God bless you.
Fr. Christopher J. Pollard
