Vanity of Vanities

All is Vanity

I know someone who likes to wear all black to look like priests. She also says it makes her look slimmer. She especially likes the tight slinky black coctail dress she got on sale. Vanity.
I know someone else who is on an all-brown kick--- likes to wear all brown to look like capuchin monks. She is a big fan in particular of a famous capuchin saint. Her fall wardrobe is a particular type of deep brown, not just any brown-to match her hair color. She spends a half hour putting on her make-up so it doesn't clash. Vanity.
I know a priest who likes to parade around wearing long embroidered robes (because he likes looking like a couch pillow?) - It is one of those signs of the people who liked the most coveted banquet seats of honor. He must be special. He is wearing a couch pillow. Vanity. God love them all.
Saint Francis wore a torn burlap sack to protest his father's fine fabric exploitative business and so as not to offend the poor beggars he was trying to help or incite envy. He wasn't trying to make a fashion statement. He didn't wear matching eye -liner. I would be more impressed if the priests dressed from the clothing given to the homeless in the parish in solidarity- second hand goods. I would like rather to see a priest with patches on his elbows sewn on his sweater than a tag hanging from Brooks Brothers.
I was impressed once with a statement by a rather famous Presbyterian preacher who once said that Presbyterian ministers of the Gospel wear robes that are modeled after academic robes as opposed to Roman aristocratic ones, because the only thing separating them from the plebian masses of believers to whom he preaches is that he has biblical seminary education and training. He is supposedly more learned. That is supposed to make him more humble.

I was also impressed by a sermon/homily I heard of a Saint-I think Josephat-who saw a beggar on the street, so instinctively tore his cloak in two to give him half. Later he had a vision of Jesus wearing the other half of his cloak. Jesus does say, insomuch as you do several things meeting the temporal needs to the least of these, his brethren, you do them to Him (which include cloathing the naked, feeding the hungry, giving shelter to the homeless, etc...)

Imagine then that if instead of all men living in palaces and castles (is the Dominican House not a Castle? Is Saint Patrick's Rectory not a palace? Are the monestaries of Europe not as large as a Castle?) that half of them were space for priestly families. Half the ones in europe are getting sold to make B&Bs anyway- or to private developers to turn into resorts. Wouldn't it further the kingdom if these were priestly family abodes. Then perhaps we may see visions of Jesus actually living in half of them.