Although we probably don’t think of it very often, clothing has a prominent role in salvation history. We know that Adam and Eve were “naked without shame” (Gen 2:25) in the garden before the fall, but after they sinned, they made themselves some sort of covering out of fig leaves: whatever it was they made, the Bible refuses to dignify it with the word “clothing” or “garment,” and instead calls it an “apron,” a mere “covering,” or, at best, “a loincloth,” something partial and imperfect (חֲגוֹר).[1] As God “walked in the garden in the cool of the evening,” (Gen 3:8) He came upon the pair, hidden among the trees. Once they emerge, and God tells them what their fate will be, even before they are expelled from the garden, God makes them garments out of animal skins. The word here is different (כֻּתֹּ֫נֶת): here, God makes actual clothes or garments for them.[2] It’s the very first thing that God does after speaking to them: He makes clothes and covers them. Adam and Eve were utterly incapable of making an appropriate covering for themselves; God, on the other hand, provides something suitable.
We can imagine that moment in the garden: in the cool of that solitary evening, the first evening since the dawn of time when things weren’t right, when things had ceased to be perfect, God stood face to face with His sinful children, and gave them the clothes they would need to cover themselves as they left the garden and began to walk the rough paths of the world back to Him. It’s as though God told them, “My children, you can’t provide yourselves with what you need. Let Me cover you for the journey that lies ahead.” Adam and Eve would no longer be able to see God walk in the garden, but that covering would be a constant reminder of His protection. We could say that, in that moment in the garden, God Himself performed the first investiture of habit, and, although the moment meant dying to an old way of life, that affirmation of God’s love could lead them to say, as Isaiah would say centuries later, “I rejoice heartily in the Lord, my being exults in my God; For he has clothed me with garments of salvation, and wrapped me in a robe of justice” (Is 61:10).
Tomorrow, this moment will repeat itself, as it has at investitures throughout the centuries. Although we won’t see God walk as He once did through the garden, in the crypt of the National Shrine, He will say to His sons and His daughters, who, as sons of Adam and daughters of Eve, are sinners, “My children, you can’t provide yourselves with what you need. Let Me cover you for the journey that lies ahead.” That journey is the path of their vocations, a path that will wind roads all over the face of the earth. Their habits serve as a constant reminder of God who called them apart in the first place, and of His Son, whom He sent, clothed in human flesh, to set things right. This time is also a dying to an old way of life for the novices; they will die to themselves in order to live fully and completely for Christ alone.
In a world that is obsessed with fashion and things visible, a world that refuses to acknowledge God, the religious habit reminds everyone who sees it of God, whether they want to think of Him or not. Sometimes, this makes people angry. Pride caused our first parents to fall, and it continues to be a popular sin. Sometimes though, and more often than you might think, the habit brings people back to God. In the depths, they recognize that they are incapable of providing themselves with what they need, and they recognize one whom God has clothed in His Mercy.[3]
In short then, the reception of habit is not really about us: it is about God who clothes us, God who separates us and calls us apart for His service. We owe it to Him to love our habits, and to love Him. Tomorrow’s celebration is a moment of triumph for God who calls His sons and daughters back to Himself and clothes them with the graces they need to be like “another Incarnation of Christ.”
Let us pray, through the intercession of Mary, Our Lady of Lujan, the Immaculate Conception, for the grace to love our habits as our second skins, and for the grace to persevere in our vocations until the end.
Fr. Nathaniel Dreyer
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[1] Gen 3:7. Cf. Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance: “apron, armor, girdle.” In Greek, περιζώματα.
[2] Gen 3:21. Cf. Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance: “coat, garment, or robe.” In Greek, χιτῶνας, the same word used in Jn 19:23 for Christ’s seamless garment.
[3] Fulton Sheen’s magnificent words regarding Christ apply beautifully to the habit: “Christ is ever the Stumbling Block, Frustrator, Disturber. . . . The stumbling block character is really not in Him but in us. Two men go to hear an orchestra: one has an ear for music, to the other it is jangling noise. The concert is the same to both, but the difference is in the listener” (Those Mysterious Priests, 282)
