Attentiveness

Clothes communicate.

Clothes can communicate financial status.

Clothes can communicate identification with cultural trends.

Financial status and cultural trends, of course, mean little or nothing in the eyes of God. For that reason, together with comfort and convenience, some people do not “dress up” for church any more.

But clothes also communicate attentiveness and respect.

In today’s Gospel (Matthew 22:1-14), our Lord tells a parable in which a man is inattentive in his attire.

But when the king came in to meet the guests
he saw a man there not dressed in a wedding garment.
He said to him,
'My friend, how is it
that you came in here without a wedding garment?'
But he was reduced to silence.
Then the king said to his attendants,
'Bind his hands and feet,
and cast him into the darkness outside,
where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth.'

May we demonstrate our attentiveness and respect in the presence of God, inside and out.