The Observer
By: Don Pax
We walk among them in flowing habits. We, the supposed bearers of sacred light. Our garments catch the morning sun as we walk through the neighborhood and scroll through phones, turning heads and portraying respectful glances. But beneath the carefully covered habits, what remains of the ancient fire? Where is the trembling awe that once brought holy men and women to their knees?
We have become merchants of holiness, trading in appearances while our inner temples gather dust. The habit that once signified death to self now serves as a badge of honor, a marker of status in a world that still hungers for something beyond itself. More often than not, we forget that Lucifer wore the brightest habit in heaven before pride scooped out his grace.
In monasteries and convents, in rectories and religious houses, the ancient walls still whisper to us of the saints who fled from approval, who sought the lowest place, who worked miracles by night and begged to be forgotten by day. They understood that true holiness recoils from the spotlight like morning dew disappearing before the unforgiving sun. Yet here we are, their supposed successors, carefully hanging our presence on social media, measuring our worth in followers and likes, mixing visibility with virtue.
The habit was meant to hide us, to make us invisible so that only Christ would be seen. Now we wear it like a crown, forgetting that our Master wore only thorns. We speak of humility in elegant words while angels weep at our crafted sanctity. The very robes that should remind us of our duty to disappear have become our stage costumes in a drama of our own making.
But grace still rendezvous the corners of our world. In hidden places, there are still those who tremble before the Blessed Sacrament, who in darkness continue to pray for a world that has forgotten how to pray, and who serve without hashtags or photo opportunities. These are the true inheritors of the saints, wearing their humanity with the same humility with which they wear their habits.
Turning back is simple, though never easy: to remember that we are dust, blessed dust maybe, but dust all the same. To recall that every habit, every religious garment, every sacred vessel exists not to exalt the bearer but to point beyond itself to the Divine. To understand that true holiness feels more like emptiness than fullness, more like failure than success, more like dying than living.
Remember, the habit does not make a monk. Angels fell despite their glory, and peasants became saints in patched clothes and rough hands. The only garment that matters is the one woven from humility, stitched with the thread of genuine love, dyed in the blood of daily sacrifice. This is the habit we must fight to wear, even as our outer habits turn to strips and our carefully erected images crush to reveal the truth beneath.
In the end, it will not matter how many recognized us on the street or praised our piety. All that will remain is the answer to one question: Did we, beneath whatever we wore, truly become lesser so that Christ could become greater?
