Bodily Prayer

Why fasting and proper dress matter.

Welcome, if this is your first read; welcome back, if you are returning. I thought upon completion of my first post that I would go through the structure of a plan of life next. I will, in time, but this matter of bodily prayer strikes me as more important at the moment, and hence today’s topic.

We are composite creatures, body and soul. For my Protestant readers and friends, we’ll save the discussion on body, soul, and spirit for another time: it’s not germane to today’s discussion. What is germane is this: “The Word became Flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father.” St. John the Beloved and the other eyewitness beheld his glory because they saw it with their own eyes, in the flesh of the Incarnate Lord Jesus. We behold His glory when we see His Spirit at work in other people: we see evidence of holiness that we know are not of human manufacture. We see changes in attitudes, which translate into changes of physical comportment. Sometimes we see a light or a lightness about a person. Sometimes we even smell holiness around or from within a person. When the Lord saves us, He saves us body and soul, and sometimes the evidences are discernible.

The body matters. The Lord redeems the whole person, and calls the whole person to holiness. So, too, therefore, the way we treat the body matters.

And the body is unruly. It wants what it wants; and what it usually wants is more, unless it is sick, or it has been trained to know that more than is strictly needed will make it sick.

Jesus trained his body, before He began His earthly ministry. He fasted forty days and forty nights, “and afterward he was hungry.” This is where the devil launched his first temptation: at the level of bodily needs. And how did Jesus answer him? “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.” That answer was enough to put paid to the first temptation, and so Old Scratch tried his second ruse, and his third, both of which also failed.

I suppose that had Jesus given in, the devil would have responded with, “But wait! There’s more!” Jesus did not give in, nor would he: the sinless God-Man, God Incarnate, knew exactly what the devil was up to, and dispatching him was less than child’s play for him.

But not for us.

Which is why fasting matters for us.

Jesus instructed his disciples, “when you fast…,” not “if you fast.” Fasting is part of the program of redemption established by the Lord Himself, and when we fail to fast, our progress in the spiritual life is slow, and maybe even stalled or ended. I’ll leave it to you to supply all the reasons why, in part because if you discover the reasons on your own, you’re much more apt to believe it than if you hear it from someone else.

This much I will say: fasting teaches us that we can do without. “You can (and should) have it all!” “You deserve it!” These are the mantras in the air. They aren’t true, and we know it. We don’t like that they aren’t true: we know somehow that we are incomplete, and we want to fill the lacks ourselves. Some of them, we can. And yet others, no. Advertising is adept at exploiting that sense so that we can keep filling the space made for God with stuff — goods that rot and wither, experiences the memories of which fade over time. So we cram ourselves with stuff we do not really need and need, in fact, not to have.

The Fall is due to the devil’s lie that God was holding back (on the knowledge of good and evil and on letting us be like him) and that we could do something about it. Well, our first parents did, and I don’t need to tell you that the attempt didn’t work out so well, for them or for us. The quest for wholeness on our own terms leaves us surfeited and miserable: surfeited, because we are overwhelmed by stuff and memories, and we cannot see the forest for the trees; miserable, because although we are full, in a certain way, we do not yet feel satisfied, and also because at a certain point, we feel defrauded. We’ve done what we were told to do and look where it has gotten us: nowhere really good. We deny the truth that to be filled, we must deny ourselves.

Doing without is good for the soul: it’s good for our spiritual growth. Man does not live by bread alone, nor by the newest iPhone, or electric car, cooking tool or technique, investment program, nor whatever else. These things can be important and good: but they are not the most important thing. Fasting teaches us to put first things first. We pray more (even if just for the grace of perseverance in the fast), and we can give the money we save from satisfying our desires to someone else who is truly hungry, truly needy in some way. In this way, in these two acts we fulfill the Summary of the Law. We love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind, and we love our neighbor as ourselves.

Fasting sharpens our senses. You know this from college days, when you were crunched on a paper or finals and didn’t have time to eat, or when you were so engrossed in something you enjoyed that you didn’t want to stop. This happens to me when I am in the great outdoors: so involved am I in what I am doing, in what I delight to do, that I don’t want to take the time to stop and eat. I see and hear better, am the more keenly aware of my surroundings, because my bodily energies are directed outward, toward observing what is all around me, rather than inward, trying to make sense and use of what I have put in me.

The sharpened sensibility real fasting produces makes us the keener to grasp what the Lord is trying to tell us, in our readings and our prayer, in our circumstances, through other people; and it makes us the much more attentive to the needs of others: we are back to the Summary of the Law, the keeping of which is not optional.

I’ll bet you’re wondering how I will make the link between fasting and proper dress. Here it is. Fasting is about self-denial in order to pay greater attention to God and others. Proper dress is also about self-denial and paying greater attention to God and others. This is especially true at Sunday Mass.

No one will really deny that dress affects attitude. You dress one way for a barbecue with family and friends. You dress another way for a wedding. The problem is that too many of us dress for the Marriage Supper of the Lamb as though we were going to the Lord’s Barbecue. Jesus told us what happens to those who appear at the feast improperly attired. Before we rush off to dismiss the argument as “oh, but he is speaking spiritually,” remember that the body reflects the state of the soul, and our attire reflects our attitude.

The Psalms tell us to worship the Lord in holy attire. This translated for centuries to wearing your Sunday best for Mass. If it meant the man had to wear his best suit, or his only suit, that the wife wore her best dress, and the kids wore their best clothes, that was what they did. And it was important because it made going to church special, something not part of our ordinary day, our ordinary existence.

Our taking the effort properly to present ourselves focused us on the Lord, made us anticipate what was about to happen, and made us mindful, too, of the others — no flashy or indiscreet clothing, no vaunting or preening. We dress well for things that are important. We do it to show we understand that what we are undertaking is important. We dress well to show that we respect what we are about to do and that we respect the others doing it, too. All of us together, everyone wearing their best, and therefore everyone working to create an environment suitable for presenting our best to unite to the Lord’s work of redemption, when He presents all that He is and has to the Father, for the Father’s praise and for the redemption of the world.

Would you show up to the Oval Office in shirt and tie, but no jacket, or in shorts and a polo shirt and no socks with your footwear? Would you wear short sleeves? Think about Royal Families for a moment. I’m sure they all have their fun clothes that they wear in the intimacy of their homes and at private, casual events when the cameras aren’t peering; but when the event is formal, or even semi-formal, they are dressed for the occasion. And yet we who are the family of God present ourselves to the King of Kings and Lord of Lords in a formal setting — the most formal setting, at the event that most truly matters —, as though it doesn't matter how we present ourselves, as though he should be glad we made the effort to be there.

My wife and I have the enormous privilege of assisting at Mass, daily and Sunday, at a Dominican monastery of cloistered nuns. The nuns wear the same habit, day in and day out. How humdrum is that? That gets boring, doesn’t it, as wearing a suit to the office and then to Sunday services gets boring.

Except here’s the thing. I heard a nun speaking at a FOCUS conference say, “I get to wear my wedding dress every day for the rest of my life.” Think about that for a moment. Let it sink in.

The full habit is invested at Solemn Profession, after many years, usually at least 7, of careful discernment and preparation by both the nun and the community of which she seeks to become a member for life. Then, at Solemn Profession, she becomes a Bride of Christ, which is why professed religious women wear a marriage band: she is married to the Lord. And she wears her wedding dress for the rest of her life, in order to honor her Spouse and Lord.

I’m sure that nuns tire of their habits from time to time. I’m sure they wish from time to time that they could wear casual clothes, or fashionable clothes, or habits that aren’t so plain (beautiful and elegant though they are ), or just have more variety. I mean, a girl likes her things, right? (So, too, we guys: let’s not kid ourselves). But they wear their habits as virginal signs that they have said Yes to the Lord forever; and they wear them as much to encourage their sisters in fidelity to their vows and their Lord as they wear the habit for themselves. All of us together, united in common worship, receiving the Word of God in Word and Sacrament, living for the praise of his glory on this earth until heaven is attained and all struggle, all sacrifice, all hardship, cease. I deny myself comforts, so that I may the more easily tend towards and, please
God, reach the highest good and help my brothers and sisters do the same.

If ever you see me at a daily Mass without a jacket, or at Sunday Mass without at least jacket and tie, give me a fraternal correction. Then, the next time I fast, I promise I will fast for your intentions. I’ll do so anyway, but I’ll redouble them for you. The price of “casual,” the price of refusing to deny ourselves, may be very high indeed, and I don’t want either of us to pay it, especially when we were created for an everlasting bliss the likes of which “eye has not seen, nor ear heard.”