Old Habits

There are two posts on Orbis Catholicus, one in which John Sonnen typically calls for the restoration of the Vincentian's traditional habit.

I have to say just seeing pictures of that distinctive habit brought back one of my earliest childhood memories, and most probably first contacts with the Church.

I have a small scar on my chin, were when I was two or three I fell over and cut my chin open. I was taken to casualty for a few stitches, I remember seeing two nurses dressed in this extraordinary headgear and asking my mother why they were dressed like that, and being told they were nuns. I remember wanting to be treated by them, I wasn't, but I do remember being smiled at by one of them.

In the other post he compares and contrasts the smiling black sister in the white habit with those around her.

I know it irritates one or two people, but let's repeat it, habits (& cassocks) attract vocations,

• they act as a sign of contradiction and challenge to the World,

they mark the wearer out as someone who has given themselves to the Lord.

both the habit and the cassock being part of choir or liturgical dress mark the wearer as a person of prayer, who unites themselves to the liturgy of the Church and therefore more especially to the "coming of the Kingdom".

They are a sign of being in the world but not of it.

The habit especially is a mark of asceticism suffusing the individual into his/her community.

Both are a mark of the hermeneutic of continuity, uniting the individual to those who have gone before.

They are a sacramentals.

I am sure there are lots of other good reasons for wearing both, help me to add to this list.