Veiling the Sacred

The resident doctor is refusing to take more labs and says we will be discharged. I swallow panic. They don’t know my son. He is a toddler trailblazer, brown eyes sparkling and rosy cheeked, not school-bus yellow and grossly puffy, zoned out on the hospital couch.

I had been at home, praying Hail Marys as I texted his symptoms of dehydration, when my thumb slipped on a skull-and-bones emoji. I was stunned and knew it was a message from Mother Mary. I had rushed to the ER and my son had passed out in triage.

I expel another litany of Hail Marys against the fearful thought of his death, a potential volcano of grief boiling inside me.

It dawns on me as I pray that I have grown lukewarm in my faith. The fire of my recent conversion to Catholicism has been stifled in the exhaustion of mothering two small children. I have been living on a religious diet of accepted minimums.

I groan internally. “Jesus, if you will make him better, I will make You the center. I will make You everything!”

“Wear a veil at mass.” Her voice, coming from in front of me, rings pure and beautiful as handbells.

I open my eyes but see no one.

“Yes, I will, Mother!”

My son’s eyes fly open and he says, “Banana, Mama. Banana.”

Mother Mary has shown me the answer.

My husband goes to the nearest store for bananas. Together, we insist on more labs and sure enough, the results come back showing my son’s potassium levels are alarmingly low. The doctors keep him one more night on intravenous potassium.

I take a deep dive into history and Tradition to learn why Mary wants me to do this. I learn that veiling has never been negated by the Magisterium and that it is one of the earliest universal edicts, instituted by Pope Clement and maintained without aberration till the late 21st Century. Then with the new Code of Canon Law it is not undone, but merely left unmentioned.

I read St Paul’s commandments to veil in 1 Corinthians 11 and muse on certain Old Testament references: Moses veiling the glory of the Lord on his face when he comes down from Mount Sinai, the Holy of Holies behind a great veil, the veiled Mary as the new Ark of the Covenant.

On Sunday I swallow the fear of embarrassment and wear a veil. I notice the veiled chalice and veiled altar, Christ veiled by the Host and the Host veiled by the Tabernacle, the graceful veil of Mother Mary’s statue.

I realise it is not a sign of oppression but a sign of worth. It is the veiling of the glory. It is cheap things that are left out, uncovered.

***

One blue, sunny day I am driving down the road, singing songs with my three young children. Suddenly, like a bell gonging, in my mind’s eye and somehow imposed into my vision the face of a woman appears. She is strangely beautiful and weeping deeply, her light eyes shimmering with tears that pour down her cheeks.

My heart is stabbed by sadness so violently that I burst into tears too. I am relieved the traffic light ahead is yellow so that I can press the brakes and compose myself.

My son clamours, “What is wrong Mama? Why are you crying?”

I try to find words through my tears. “Mother Mary is very sad at all the sin in the world. We must try to be very good and make her happy.”

For three days the face weeps in my vision and I feel my heart ache heavily in my chest. Then as the face begins to fade away, I stumble across Our Lady of Fatima’s words to St Jacinta in an Instagram meme.

“Certain fashions will be introduced that will gravely offend My Son. People who serve God should not follow these fashions. The Church has no fashions. Our Lord is always the same….

“More souls go to hell for sins of the flesh than any other.

“Woe to women wanting in modesty.”

Like an electric shock I know that this was why she wept.

I muse that our norm of skinny jeans, yoga pants, and short shorts are a definite departure from the dresses of 1917. I look up the history of clothing styles in different civilisations and find that universally, until the 20th century, women wore flowing clothing. Even in aboriginal cultures, women could be topless but somehow still have the instinct to wear grass skirts. Could it be that they had discerned a sacredness that we had lost with the advent of birth control?

The scales fall from my eyes and I see that our modern styles seek to demean the place of fertility, that sacred secret where eternal souls are conceived. Once gutted of the glory and dignity of her fertility, the woman is displayed and then mimicked in the insanity of transgenderism.

I don’t want anything I do to displease our Mother. Her face is strong with me, marking my heart. I purpose to change my whole wardrobe and miraculously, a woman in a mom’s group randomly gives me a whole bag of dresses. As I change the way I dress I notice the spiritual component to this corporal practice. The vessel where eternal souls are conceived and grown and birthed is hidden. I feel connected to Mary and to ancient femininity. I fall in love with its intrinsic beauty and ease. The flowing fabric is comfortable, it doesn’t bite or pull. It softens rather than reveals.

***

It is high summer, and off to the beach we go with our children in tow. The ocean is breathtaking, but I have to strive to ignore the practically naked people all around me. The tyranny of expected nudism and the disparity of expectation nauseates me: the majority of women in bikinis while most men sport baggy shorts.

For the first time I have adopted swimwear that is generously modest. At first I steel myself for the mortification of not blending in. But then I am surprised by how much I enjoy it. I can play with my children and sit comfortably in the sand, easy and relaxed.

One night during our stay I feel a great burden and cannot sleep. “Our Lord is greatly offended,” Mother Mary said.

I pull out my phone and read some of 1 Timothy. “Women should adorn themselves modestly and sensibly in seemly apparel”. The Greek words for “seemly apparel” are “kosmos” and “katastole” meaning “harmonious” and "flowing down”. Later in the St Paul’s letter he says, “Woman will be saved through bearing children, if she continues in faith and love and holiness, with modesty.”

I look up modesty in the Catechism of the Catholic Church: “Modesty protects the intimate centre of the person. It means refusing to unveil what should remain hidden.”

I read about the apparition of Our Lady of Fatima deep into the night. Mary said that the last battle of Satan will be against marriage and the family and that the errors of Russia will spread throughout the world.

The errors of Russia? I keep researching.

Marxism had indeed spread throughout the world. The Bolshevik Revolution takes over Russia. Marxism in turn infiltrates China, where the Cultural Revolution seeks to undo difference of sex in tandem with destroying traditional beauty. The Red Army tears up gardens, burns paintings, chops off women’s hair, and forces women to wear the same clothes as men. The traditional Chinese mother of many children, with long hair and silk dresses, is eradicated. This erasure, once forced by violence, is currently championed.

In 1928, the International Review on Freemasonry published: “Religion does not fear the dagger’s point, but it can vanish under corruption. Let us not grow tired of corruption: we may use a pretext, such as sport, hygiene, health resorts. It is necessary to corrupt, that our boys and girls practice nudism in dress. To avoid too much reaction, one would have to progress in a methodical manner: first, undress up to the elbow; then up to the knees; then arms and legs completely uncovered; later, the upper part of the chest, the shoulders, etc etc.”

Could it be that the female psyche has been altered through the daily ritual of dressing? That modernism has divorced womanhood from the Marian mystique?

"What matters is to preserve modesty together with the eternal sense of femininity… When we see a woman in trousers, we should think not so much of her as of all mankind, of what it will be when women will have masculinized themselves for good. Nobody stands to gain by helping to bring about a future age of vagueness, ambiguity, imperfection and, in a word, monstrosities.” - Giuseppe Cardinal Siri, The Notification Concerning Men’s Dress Worn By Women (1960).

My convictions crystallise. The veil, in its perfect form, is not meant as an oppression, but as a way of affirming a woman’s glory. Women have the capability to be homes of eternal souls. We are sacred life-bearers called to the strength of submission and the power of protection, in the footsteps of our Mother Mary.

“The fearful sexual decadence that we have witnessed in the course of the last forty years can be traced back, at least in part, to the fashion world’s systematic attempt to eradicate in girls the ‘holy bashfulness’ which is the proper response that women should give to what is personal, intimate, and calls for veiling. To dress modestly is the appropriate response that women should give to their “mystery”.… The devil is clever and we are stupid. He knows full well that if he can destroy femininity, he can destroy the Church, marriage and the family.” - Dr. Alice von Hildebrand