Proper Attire

We often attend Sunday Mass on mornings at the U.P. Chapel, the Parish of the Holy Sacrifice. A common sight would be churchgoers wearing sportswear, indicating they might have jogged or walked that morning at campus, probably taking advantage of the "car-less" oval scheme that's implemented every Sunday around the Academic Oval of U.P. Diliman. The priests or lay ministers giving communion do not refuse giving the Host to people dressed to run or play rather than to worship or pray. I assume that their tolerance is consistent with the open environment at the university. The Oblation, after all, symbolizes this openness and what greater oblation is there than Christ's offering His own life for our salvation.

I brought up this topic because I am reminded that in my childhood days, my parents and my school teachers taught us to dress appropriately for church. I observed that my parents, uncles and aunts usually dressed well whenever we went to church and my cousins, nephews and nieces would also be in "proper" attire as they were also taught the same thing by their parents and teachers. "Proper" attire here meant a collared shirt and long pants, usually slacks, for the males (although the boys may wear shorts), and a dress or blouse and skirt for the females (the girls usually wore a dress). Through the years, these have been relaxed with slacks replaced by khakis or denims, the collared shirts replaced by regular t-shirts, and dresses and skirts by jeans and shorts. These days, it seems to me that many people just take going to church for granted and just wear anything that we would also wear on any other day.

This may be comfortable for many of us but it seems inappropriate considering the purpose of going to church in the first place. That is, assuming that one went to church to pray or praise God, maybe thank Him for all the blessings one received, or to ask Him for something as is usually the case for many of us. Given such assortment of purposes, it still seems improper to dress too casually or, as in the examples at the U.P. Chapel, or inappropriately.

I still practice a personal tradition of first wearing any new clothing or shoes to church. Ipinangsisimba ko muna. It is my way of thanksgiving for such blessings that we often regard as a common thing that we forget to thank the One who granted such to us in the first place. Another personal tradition is to be presentable everytime I go to Mass. It is actually a way of acknowledging that I am a guest at the house of a very important Person. I often remind myself about what our Rector at my High School told us: "If you were to visit Malacanang or the White House, won't you be dressing up? What more if you were to visit the house of God Who is of higher stature than these persons?"

It's really quite simple when one thinks of these things in that regard. Problem is that we have become to casual and practically do not care about such things as dressing up for the Mass. We don't care. But frankly, if we didn't care, why should the other person (in this case God) care about us? Isn't that too much of an expectation when we can't even package ourselves as presentable to Him when we do come to His temple? I'll leave it up to the philosophers to answer these questions.