The Stole and the Apron

Stole and apron:to put the two of them on together may sound disrespectful, almost an act of desecration.

The stole is made for the sacristy, kept neatly with the finely decorated chasubles and all the other sacred linens, amidst the perfume of incense and the mystical language of biblical symbols. There is no newly ordained deacon or priest who has not received a beautiful and precious stole as a gift from a convent of Sisters.

The apron belongs to the kitchen among the frying pans, the bags of flour and jars of oil, the vegetables and other ingredients, and the plates to be washed... or in the store with the domestic cleaning materials. No one would think of giving an apron as a gift, for a wedding or a birthday, much less for an ordination.

And yet the apron is the only liturgical dress mentioned in the Gospel... yes, the Gospel, and the most theological of the four - the holy gospel according to John!

For Christ’s first solemn Mass, the first Mass in the history of the universe, celebrated the night before he died, there is no mention of alb, stole or chasuble, but only of a rough piece of cloth, the apron that Jesus put on, the perfect priestly garment. 

Maybe it would be good for us to complete the equipment of our sacristies by including an apron among the golden decorated chasubles, dalmatics and stoles and the finely embroidered albs.    

An apron tailored from the stole

What matters most, anyway, is not the inclusion of the apron in the wardrobe of the sacristy, but to understand clearly that the stole and the apron are like front and back of the same priestly garment.  Or even better: they are the length and the breadth of the same robe of service, service of God and neighbour. The stole without the apron is nothing more than liturgical fashion. The apron without the stole does not bear fruits of charity.

 In John’s Gospel there are three verbs, which are essential, simple and yet pregnant in meaning. Together they contain the full weight of the theology of service. These three verbs express the perfect complementarity of apron and stole. Here they are: “he got up from the table”, “he took off his garment”, and “he put on an apron”.

He got up from the table

This means two things. First of all it means that the Eucharist is not about sitting down. It does not have time for a siesta. It doesn’t allow for indulgence in food. It forces us at a certain point to abandon the table. It prompts action. It urges us to leave the comfort of armchair and sofa and to embrace the dynamism of missionary journeys, driven by the fire burning inside.  

This is the problem: too often our Eucharist loses energy in mere choreography.  We are content to rest in the upper room, with preachers or singers too concerned with themselves and the impression they make, while the congregation are bored and fall asleep. There is no sense of commitment.

If we don’t get up from the table, the Eucharist becomes an empty sacrament. The drive to action is so strongly rooted in the very nature of the Eucharist, that it forces the one who receives it to leave the table -even when it is received by a sacrilegious soul, like Judas who “took the morsel and went out at once. It was dark”.

But “he got up from the table” has another meaning, which is really important: it means that the other two verbs “he took off his garment” and “he put on an apron” bring salvation only if they stem from the Eucharist.  If we have not first been “at table” even the most generous service rendered to our brothers runs the risk of becoming mere philanthropy which has little or nothing to do with the love of Christ.  

For priests, every social commitment, every fight for justice, every effort on behalf of the poor, every struggle for liberation, every concern for the triumph of truth must start from “the table”, from time spent with Christ, from familiarity with him. We must drink his chalice with all its implications of martyrdom.  In a word, priestly action must begin with intense prayer.

Only then will our self-emptying be fruitful and our sacrifices be crowned with victory. Only then will the water we pour on our brothers’ feet free them to walk all the way on the road to freedom.

He took off his garment

Maybe I am forcing the text but it seems to me that this expression of the Gospel offers the model of priestly behaviour if it is to be rooted in the Eucharist. Whoever sits at the table of the Eucharist must “take off his garment”. He must take off the garments of one who counts the cost and calculates his own interests. He must be ready to share in all his nakedness.  He must take off the garments of wealth and luxury, of waste, of a middle-class lifestyle, and become transparent in modesty and simplicity.  He must take off the garments of power, arrogance and control and clothe himself instead in a veil of weakness and poverty, knowing full well that poor is not so much the opposite of rich but the opposite of powerful.

We must abandon the signs of power in order to preserve the power of the signs.

We cannot afford to fall in love with power. Nor can we engage in any underhand dealing that is contrary to justice, even with the pretext of helping the poor.  We should be terrified of the danger of manipulating pubic money.  We should feel uneasy when we hear people say that a recommendation from us carries weight, that our word can sway a decision, that our requests are privileged.  The allurement of money, even when it is for the Church and not for our own pockets, should never lead us into complicity in dishonest dealings.  Otherwise we are developing in our lives a series of “anti-paschs” which block the flow of salvation from Christ’s Pasch.

Taking off the garment means becoming a “poor clergy”, a clergy of the least, of the poor and disinherited, of the suffering, the illiterate, and of all those who are left behind or trampled upon by others.
  

He put on an apron

Now we come to what I like to call “the Church of the apron”.  Maybe it seems too bold an image, almost provocative.  It is a picture of the Church that reveals too much, one of those photographs that we do not display in public for fear people might grumble or gossip.  We keep it in the family album and show it to a few special people. We smile then at our lack of decorum, as if this were a photo that was taken without our knowing it.

The Church of the apron does not gain wide acceptance. In the hit parade, the preferred image of Church is of a priest in chasuble with the lectionary in hand.  But that other image that looks like a domestic servant, with a rag over his arm, a basin in his right hand and a jug in the left, seems to reduce the Church to the realm of fantasy.

We need to rediscover the way of service. This means bending down and sharing, and getting involved in the lives of the poor.

It is a hard road. There is the temptation to delegate, to pay others to wash feet whilst we avoid the inconvenience of humble service.

But it is the only road that leads us to the source of our kingship. The only way that allows us to regain lost credibility is the way of service.

Only when we have served will we be able to speak and expect to be believed.  Only then will we be able to wear the precious garment of our priestly dignity, and nobody will have anything to say about it.

John’s Gospel continues: “When he had washed their feet and put on his outer garments again he went back to the table.  He said ...”   What did he say? We know very well what he said! It was then he spoke that marvellous discourse that marks the official passage from the word of the servant to servants of the word.