{"id":13769,"date":"2012-10-20T07:00:34","date_gmt":"2012-10-20T14:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/?p=13769"},"modified":"2015-03-19T15:55:46","modified_gmt":"2015-03-19T22:55:46","slug":"mass-clothes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/2012\/10\/20\/mass-clothes\/","title":{"rendered":"Mass Clothes"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of my New Year’s Resolutions for 2012<\/a> has been to\u00a0“Make an effort to dress well for Mass”<\/em><\/span>.\u00a0Some of my friends expressed surprise when I said that this was one of my resolutions, since they assumed that I was the sort of person who would naturally dress smartly for Mass.<\/p>\n

\"Inappropriate<\/p>\n

I was trying to work out how my laxity came about. Here’s how I think it happened…<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

As a child, my mother would choose my clothes for church on Sunday, so I just wore whatever I was told (although probably after a lot of complaining…).<\/p>\n

It then came time to receive my First Holy Communion. This event marked a particularly important watershed in my parish since it meant also meant that I was then allowed to become an Altar Server. Being an Altar Boy at my church had loads of great perks, not least the chocolate we received on major Feast Days \ud83d\ude42 Anyway, since I was now an altar server, whatever I wore on Sunday was now covered by a cassock, so the emphasis on smart clothes was immediately\u00a0reduced. In addition, in the early years I had a tendency to get hot and pass out while on the altar. Because of this, the focus of my Sunday clothing moved from “smart and respectable”<\/span> to\u00a0<\/em>“light and cool”<\/em><\/span>.<\/p>\n

I continued to serve on the altar until it came time to go to university. At the university chaplaincy the style was very casual, so I just continued the trend which had begun in my teenage years.<\/p>\n

After I graduated, I attended Protestant parishes for a few years where the casual form of dress was actually a point of pride among those communities.\u00a0This was the kind of attitude I could get behind! When I saw people going to church in their “Sunday Best” I thought to myself “Who are they trying to impress? They’re probably just trying to ‘keep up with the Joneses’. Stuffy, boring people… “<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Church<\/p>\n

So what changed my mind? Why am I now trying to make an effort on Sundays in the way I dress? I think my perspective began to change when I heard a speaker ask:<\/p>\n

“If you were going to meet the President of the United States or the Queen of England, how would you dress? Smartly, right? Why would you do anything less when coming to worship God and commune with Him in the Eucharist?”<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

I had no real answer to this. If we make a great fuss over our clothing when we enter into the covenant of marriage…why should we treat our clothing lightly when we renew our covenant with the Lord each Sunday?<\/p>\n

Or, at the very least, couldn’t I at least spare\u00a0those around me from hearing the sound of my flip-flops as I walk down the aisle to receive the Lord?!<\/p>\n

I have done pretty well with my resolution this year to dress smartly for the Sunday liturgy. Interestingly, what I have found is that because of this, Sundays have started to take on a different feel, a different quality, a different character from the other days of the week. By simply paying more attention to what I’m wearing, Sunday has become a day which is holy (“h\u00e1gios”<\/span><\/em>) and set apart, marked out in a special way for the Lord.<\/p>\n

So how do you dress when you go to church? why? Does it make any kind of difference in your spiritual life?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

UPDATE:<\/span> The blog Not a mix, a moron or a parasite<\/a>\u00a0just posted an article\u00a0What I Wore Sunday<\/a>! Go check it out!<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of my New Year’s Resolutions for 2012 has been to\u00a0“Make an effort to dress well for Mass”.\u00a0Some of my friends expressed surprise when I said that this was one of my resolutions, since they assumed that I was the sort of person who would naturally dress smartly for Mass. I was trying to work out how my laxity came<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[676,1571,2969,1570,223],"class_list":["post-13769","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-faith","tag-church","tag-clothing","tag-featured","tag-holy","tag-mass"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13769","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13769"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13769\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56584,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13769\/revisions\/56584"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}