Leave it to The Anchoress to capture, beautifully, the power and poetry of what it means to wear the habit, on this World Day of Prayer for Vocations:

In the late 1970’s I heard a teaching sister say that the shedding of religious habits was a good thing, because it emphasized that sisters were “nothing special; that we are all special in God’s eyes.”

I recall thinking “that’s wrong reasoning,” but I didn’t understand why. Now, I do.

This sister gave an example: “when we were in our habits, a fellow with an Italian Ice barrow would always insist on giving us free ices, but why should he? Why shouldn’t we pay like anyone else? Why should we deprive him of his living because we were in a costume?”

Putting aside how unlikely it might be for an Italian Ice seller to go broke because of a few free scoops of sugar-water, what is clear, now, is the sister’s horizontal and earthbound thinking, which had some breadth but neither height nor depth. As with the “horizontally-focused” masses and hymns that over-emphasize the human part of church, Sister was embracing the beam of the cross without considering that the vertical post is necessary if anyone is to be raised up.

The Horizontal beam is us; humanity and the world, necessarily reaching out toward each other. The Vertical post is our reaching up together from the earth to the heavens, to the Eternal. Also necessary. That’s the part Sister had forgotten.

Do read the rest and see other beautiful pictures of Benedictines taking the habit at this link. (I found the image below mysteriously moving…)