Chapter LXIX: Of Modesty in Dress.—continuation

KEEP neat and take care of what you wear; make it last. What matter is it if your bonnet or your dress is a little out of fashion?

Study, then, simplicity and economy in your dress, for these things are suitable to your condition and station in life, and are pleasing to God. Avoid setting your heart on dress and fashion, for they will produce in your heart vanity and self-love, that destroy the love of God. Hear what the Holy Ghost says of such things: And the Lord said: “Because the daughters of Sion are haughty and have walked with outstretched necks and wanton glances of the eye, and made a noise as they walked with their feet, and moved in a set pace, the Lord will make bald the crown of the head of the daughters of Sion, and the Lord will discover their hair. In that day the Lord will take away the ornament of shoes, and little moons, and chains, and necklaces, and bracelets, and bonnets, and bodkins, and ornaments of the legs, and tablets, and sweet balls, and ear-rings and rings, and jewels hanging on the forehead, and changes of apparel, and short cloaks, and fine linen, and crisping-pins, and looking-glasses, and lawns, and head-bands, and fine veils. And instead of a sweet smell, there shall be stench; and instead of a girdle, a cord; and instead of curled hair, baldness; and instead of a stomacher, hair-cloth” (Isai. iii. 16-24).

Here it is not meant to condemn the use of each of these things separately, but to condemn most severely any inordinate and excessive following of worldly fashion.

So St. Paul says: “In like manner let women in decent apparel adorn themselves with modesty and sobriety, not with plaited hair, or gold, or pearls, or costly array. But as it becometh women professing piety with good works” (1 Tim. ii. 9).

And St. Peter: “Whose adorning, let it not be the outward plaiting of the hair, or the wearing of gold, or the putting on of apparel, but the hidden man of the heart, in the incorruptibility of a quiet and meek spirit, which is rich in the sight of the Lord” (1 St. Pet. iii. 3, 4).

And in another place the Holy Ghost says: “Glory not in apparel at any time” (Eccles. xi. 4). St. John Chrysostom says on this subject: “The dancer, the prostitute, and the actor wear more handsome and costly habiliments than you. Besides, you glory in a thing of the pleasure of which the moth may deprive you; you glory in a thing which worms produce and destroy. Buy a garment woven above, a garment admirable and splendid, made of true gold: this gold is not dug from the earth by convicts, it is the product of virtue. Let us be clothed in that robe which is wrought, not by mechanics and slaves, but by the Lord Himself.”

Avoid everything tending in the least to immodesty in your dress, no matter if it be the fashion. It is never the fashion for modest women who fear God; for such women never follow evil fashions. St. Chrysostom says of those who do so: “They make a sport of the death of souls, merely to gratify a senseless pride, a pitiful vanity. They adhere to sin a thousand times more by the indecency of their apparel than by the voice.”

Low-necked dresses and bare arms give an air of vulgarity to those who wear them, and provoke much remark which would cause the blush of shame to crimson the cheek of the modest. They cause mortal sin sometimes, more even than a more open and undisguised indecency, which would disgust by its coarseness.

Consult, then, the Holy Ghost, listen to His voice in your hearts, and rather be too particular than careless in so important a matter.

To conclude, and to show you the difference between the pomp and splendor of the world and true Christian simplicity, let me give you the account of the journey of Melania, a noble Roman lady, to visit St. Paulinus at Nola. I will relate it in the very words of St. Paulinus himself. But first I must tell you who Melania was. She was a noble Roman matron, possessed of immense riches, which were left at her disposal at the death of her husband, which occurred when she was only twenty-three years old. From that time she determined to devote herself to the service of God entirely, and she spent many years in the Holy Land, having sold her property and distributed it freely for the relief of the needy. At the end of these years she came back to Rome for a short time, to encourage her only son and her granddaughter to devote themselves also entirely to Christ. It was on this occasion that she, her daughter-in-law, and granddaughter, made this pious visit to St. Paulinus. Now for the account.

“She hastened,” said he, “to come and visit us, accompanied by her children in all their pomp and show. We saw the triumph of the glory of the Lord in the different style and equipage with which the mother and her daughters (Albina and the young Melania) made the same journey. Their mother was seated on a poor, lean horse, more worthless and meaner than an ass, but she was followed by proud senators, who walked surrounded by all the pomp which the grandeur of their position and their opulence could afford. The Appian Way was not only covered, but completely crowded and resplendent, with pavilioned cars and gilded carriages, drawn by horses superbly harnessed, and a very great number of chariots; but the beauty of Christian humility far outshone all this vain display.

“While the rich admired her who, though poor, was holy, she despised their wealth. We there were witnesses in this humiliation of the proud world to that which God esteems, since we behold royal purple, and silk, and robes embroidered with gold, humble themselves before the black and worn garments of serge.

“We blessed the Lord, Who makes the humble wise, and in Whose sight true humility is a sure exaltation; Who filleth with good things and satiates with His holy viands those who hunger and thirst after His grace and justice, leaving the rich in their want.”