In honor of the recent feast of the Annunciation (March 25), I wanted to reflect on the tradition veiling in the Catholic Church, how it relates to Mary, and why I choose to practice this tradition.
It seems a bit superficial to say that the idea of wearing a veil at mass first intrigued me because the veils just looked really pretty. What’s more, as a lover of history and renaissance festival enthusiast, the nerd in me kind of liked the idea of “dressing up” in something from the past. On the other hand, these two elements of my initial attraction point to deeper realities essential to the Catholic spiritual life.
First, my admiration the veil’s beauty points to the role that beauty plays in the spiritual life. One of the primary ways in which God attracts us to himself is through beauty, beauty we take in with our five senses. A god who became flesh and blood, who created the human body, intends for the material world to draw us closer to him. The Catholic Church, taking her cue from her incarnate lord, has thus always sought to incarnate God’s beauty in art, architecture, and music. Indeed, in the artwork depicting the beauty of many female saints, most of all Mary, the beauty of the veil is evident. Indeed in one of my favorite images of Mary, that of Our Lady of Guadalupe, she wears a gorgeous blue veil strewn with gold stars. As a child, the beauty of this veil was one of the reasons I drew close to Our Lady of Guadalupe. Of course, Mary’s physical beauty, and the beauty of her clothing, in religious artwork, is meant to signify the far greater beauty of her soul. It is the beauty of a soul that is in perfect communion with God. The beauty of the veil pointed to the beauty of the veiled Blessed Mother, and the beauty of the Blessed Mother, as she always does, pointed towards the beauty of relationship with God.
As for my desire to “dress up” like women of the past, it points to the love of and respect for tradition that is a unique hallmark of Catholic spirituality. What G.K. Chesterton famously called “the democracy of the dead,” is central to the Catholic faith. Respect for tradition is an acknowledgement that those who came before us are now living in heaven as members of the Church Triumphant. They are as much our brothers and sisters (if not more so) than those who sit in the pews next to us. Therefore, the prayers, liturgies, works of art, teachings, sacraments, and scriptures they passed on to us are to be preserved as gifts of surpassing value, and to modified only when the Holy Spirit calls us to do so. Veiling is one of those traditions that Mother Church ultimately decided to modify, by making it and optional rather than mandatory practice. However, this change does not mean our ancestors were mistaken in making it common practice for most of Church history.
Indeed, it was once I dug into the traditional beliefs surrounding veiling that I ultimately decided to start wearing one at mass. But first, the choice to dig into these beliefs was inspired by the witness of others. I’d lived most of my life on the east coast, where the occasional veil wearing woman was either very elderly, or a nun. It wasn’t until I moved to the midwest that I saw young lay women, both single and married, wearing veils. They were still a minority, but a sizable minority. Furthermore, they were a minority that stuck out, not merely because of their beautiful headwear, but because of their attentiveness during mass. By divine providence, one of these young women became my coworker and friend.
Talking to her about why she wore a veil, observing the reverence she exhibited at mass, and admiring how seriously she took her reception of the Eucharist, my heart began to stir. The characteristics she exhibited were also, interestingly, very Marian characteristics. Like Mary, she was faithful. Like Mary, she received Jesus into her body with the utmost humility. In short, both in her physical wearing of a veil and in her spirituality, my friend was a model of the feminine virtue which is perfected in the Blessed Mother. Wanting to imitate the faith of my friend, and to model myself after Mary, I began to research veiling. What I found set my heart a flame.
While there are socio-cultural reasons for the practice of veiling, related to the much maligned virtue of modesty, such reasons barely scratch the surface of the rich theological tradition undergirding the practice of veiling. Far from being a sign of my inferiority to man, I learned that the veil is a sign of the “sanctity and dignity of women” (BC Torch). In Judeo-Christian tradition, “the faithful cover or veil things that are sacred and life-giving” (BC Torch). In Catholic tradition in particular, after “life is brought into the world in the Eucharist,” this holiest of sacraments is “veiled in the tabernacle” (BC Torch). As a result, women, whose “bodies too can bring forth life” through what St. John Paul II called “the feminine genius,” are veiled to indicate their holiness (BC Torch). The Blessed Mother is the perfect type of this unique feminine holiness. She is the living tabernacle, the New Ark of the Covenant whose body once contained God himself. In addition, Mary, the mother of Jesus in the natural order, is given to us to be our mother in the spiritual order. Like Mary, all Catholic women are called to be mothers, no matter if our children are biological or spiritual. As a young woman discerning when to begin trying for children, I found this reminder of my unique vocation to motherhood reassuring. While I questioned my physical and emotional capacity to be a mother, due to my struggles with mental illness, the veil reminded me that motherhood was what I was made for.
Even more than the way it signified my motherly vocation, I was struck by the way signifies the bridal imagery used to describe Jesus’ relationship with the church. In this analogy, Jesus is the groom and the church is the bride. In a unique way, women are “living icon[s] of the church. When they veil, they can serve as “visible reminder[s] for all of the spousal relationship-the bridal relationship-between the Church and Christ” (Veils by Lily). Every soul, whether male or female, must relate to Christ as a beloved to a lover, as a bride to a groom. The veil is a physical sign of that deeper reality, a reality that deeply resonated with me.
In the past, I’d experienced an attraction to the religious life though, like St. Zelie Martin, I found that God led me down a different path. However, I had struggled, at times, with my discernment spiritual desolation and mental health issues. In my most anxious moments, I worried that the only way to “earn” God’s love, was to immolate myself on the altar of sacrifice and become a nun. Other times, I worried that God had somehow “rejected” me, that he “let” me get married because I wasn’t good enough to be a nun. A combination of prayer, therapy, and spiritual direction helped me discern the ways, in which my these thoughts offered a distorted view of God, and flew in the face of my lived experience. However, my days of desolation and anxiety had wounded me in ways that still required healing. The veil became an instrument by which God helped me to do so.
Veiling reminded me that nun or not, I still stood in a bridal relationship with Christ. Nun or not, I was still his beloved for whom he suffered and died. Nun or not, I was called to attain holiness by submitting to his will for my life, a submissions symbolized by my veiling. He had not rejected me in entrusting me to the love and care of my husband, no more than He rejected the Blessed Virgin Mary when he entrusted her to the love and care of St. Joseph. Like the Blessed Mother, I was being called to live out a life of extraordinary holiness “veiled” by the ordinary circumstances of every day life. Like Mary, my submission to his will involved submission to the idea of living a very humble and simple life, trusting in him to sanctify me, rather than straining to sanctify myself by “burnt offerings.” Veiling was my reminder to trust in the tender love of a God who invites me, and invites every soul, to give the same “fiat” His Mother once gave so that we too can become saints who bear Christ’s presence into this world.
Sources:
The Classical Catholic 