The cassock
A cassock is the dress of the clergy and of those who are preparing to become priests. One seminarian, on the day he put on the cassock for the first time, received a letter from a friend a few years older than himself. This is what he learned about the cassock:
The cassock. Today in your eyes it is more beautiful than a bride's gown. You are happy in it, and rightly so. You have waited for it since the beginning of the seminary.
I hope you will be just as happy in it when it also begins to be for you what its colour prompts you to think of – a shroud, a uniform for dying. Today it is a wedding dress, admired by you, by those close to you and by your friends. Be just as delighted with it when it begins to be a hermitage, a cage, a furnace in which God will melt you down and purify you, a restless hermit's cell.
This wedding dress, when it is needed, will also be armour for you – provided you are willing to remember that and to make use of it. Walking about in a cassock can and should be a prayer in itself, but it does not become one automatically by the fastening of the buttons.
The pockets. The deep ones are there so that you have somewhere to keep everything you will give away to people. Always have something to give to those in need and to children. Remember that people will be more grateful to you for a small coin, a smile and a kind word than for a beautiful singing of the chant. For what people need above all is to hear that they are loved. And even more than to hear it, they need to see that it is true.
The inner pocket over the heart. Contrary to what the arbiters of high-priestly elegance claim, it is not at all for keeping an expensive pen in. Carry in it the letters you do not know how to answer, the slips of paper with the names of those you promised to pray for, the bills you decided to pay for others, the addresses you know you will have to go to, because they will never come to you of themselves, photographs of dogs, cats, grandchildren and lovers, the leaves and drawings given to you by children from the nursery school. Let that pocket always be stuffed full.
May the cassock get tangled between your legs and get in your way whenever you try to strut about like a peacock and sweep the ground with the tail of your ambitions. May you always trip over it when you are being carried off into the wilderness. And you will be. But do not be afraid to hitch it up and run to a brother in need. Even if you should make a fool of yourself and look like a clown.
The sleeves can be rolled up further than that symbolic cuff. It is there to remind you that a cassock is not a dress uniform but working clothes. Yet roll up your sleeves only for the work which he tells you to do. Never for a revolution of your own devising.
I wish you white marks of salt to appear on your cassock. On the back from sweat, and on the breast from tears – your own and those of the people who, nestled against you, will weep out before you a thousand small and great sorrows, deadly serious ones and utterly silly ones. And I wish those marks to appear much sooner than the white marks in your hair.
Do not be afraid to crease it and to get it dirty as you throw yourself to the aid of those in need and of the wounded. Do not grudge it for bandages and dressings for a person's wounds. Remember that, if the worst comes to the worst, at a pinch it can be made into a cloak or a tent.
May it wear thin at the knees and shoulders sooner – from prayer and from carrying human burdens – than at the seat and the elbows, from comfortable sitting and from pushing through crowds. Love it, and not yourself in it. And above all love the Church, which gives it to you today. And even more, love Jesus, who gave you the Church, and gave you to the Church – for which I too thank him so very much today.
PS. Remember that on the bus and in the underground everyone thinks he has more right to a seat than a priest. And to be honest, it matters little whether he is right. What matters is that, if it comes to it, in drawing hatred upon yourself you should not draw it upon God as well. More and more people will be looking at you, because a cassock makes you stand out. But it also intimidates, so fewer and fewer of them will have the courage and the will to tell you when you are in the wrong. That does not mean at all, however, that they will have no reason to. Remember that your cassock is not the wrapping of a finished product. The Lord clothed you in it in order to cover your shortcomings mercifully. Knowing this, you will be happy (cf. Jn 13:17).
Fr Michał Lubowicki | 21/06/2017
Article published on the Aleteia website.
