We instinctively reserve the most precious things in life for solemn moments. Grandmother’s Christmas China isn’t special anymore if you use it for Wednesday morning Fruit Loops. This reveals a simple principle: distance from everyday sight reveals the value of a treasure. Gold is more precious than steel, not because it’s more useful, but because it is rare.
Yet the individual human person is more unique and precious than any physical substance or object. Modesty, like a China cabinet, preserves the dignity of the person by insisting that his or her body should be promoted beyond the casual gaze and restricted from unworthy use.
By shielding the sacredness of the human body from the naked eye, modesty silently reveals the value of the highest earthly good – the human person. Men and women, made in the image of God, are called to total self-gift. One can lovingly give of oneself in every relationship, but self-gift is more totally accomplished through the union of man and woman in a free, full, faithful, and fruitful relationship.
Through this union, human beings endowed with eternal souls come into existence; thus, procreation is a natural consequence of being made in the image of God. Since certain parts of the human body are specifically oriented toward procreation, these are physical indications of the call to total self-gift. These bodily locations are intrinsically tied with one’s vocation and personhood — and protecting those parts from objectification is not only right but necessary..
Before sin entered the human story, man and woman could be “reciprocally a disinterested gift,” according to Pope John Paul II in “The Theology of the Body.” This means they could love the other more than the bodily desire that resulted. Modesty wasn’t necessary because objectification wasn’t in their emotional calculus. After the Fall, however, sensual pleasure began to threaten the union between men and women rather than promote it.
To preserve their innocent relationship as best they could, Adam and Eve covered themselves with fig leaves. They feared to be seen as merely a naked body rather than as a person with both a body and a soul. Their clothing became a pedagogical, or teaching, means of drawing each spouse’s gaze toward the whole person of the other. Only after seeing one another again as beloved could their clothing be fittingly removed.
Lust introduced a paradox in the human heart. In the broken relationship between men and women, to prematurely show too much of the reproductive attributes of the body is to show too little of one’s whole identity.
Consistent with this condition, there is an ancient tradition of veiling parts of the human body associated with fertility. In the Greco-Roman world, veiling the head was a distinctive aspect of women’s attire. This is because hair was seen as part of the reproductive economy (Hippocrates taught that the hair on a woman’s head grows long through the reception of semen from the male.)
Though ancient practice was based in part on faulty understanding of anatomy, the tradition of head-veiling was rooted in the desire to cover the parts of the body associated with fertility. Even after medical knowledge improved, veiling endured for millennia as beautiful testimony to the special nature of the human person as life-giver. And since marriage is the sanctuary of procreation, married women have historically worn veils as a sign of their vocation, and covering reproductive organs is a nearly universal norm for both men and women across cultures.
To veil the life-giving parts of the body is not to disguise them, but rather to attest that their dignity is too profound for everyday sight. After all, the mystery of the human person cannot be seen by the eyes alone but can only be understood in the context of life-giving self-gift.
Julie Glodt, a scholar specializing in the historical connection between textiles and the spiritual life, draws on the association in the biblical account between the veil and Christ’s sacrifice. When Christ cried out from the cross, “It is finished,” the veil of the sanctuary was torn. This unveiled to the world the self-giving divinity who had dwelt in the Holy of Holies of the Jewish Temple.
The veil’s presence pointed to the self-giving nature of God, which culminated on Calvary when the tearing drapery revealed the restored relationship between humanity and divinity. By this image, the everyday clothing that covers the life-giving human person powerfully mirrors the human participation in God’s self-giving nature which remains hidden until self-sacrifice is accomplished.
It is paradoxical that modesty, a form of humility that diverts excessive attention from the body, inspires heightened respect for the human person in his or her vocation to love — both biologically and spiritually.
Modestly is both a visible and invisible disposition of the human person which testifies to his or her self-giving, and hence life-giving, vocation. It should thereby inspire curiosity for deeper interpersonal discovery.
By humbly veiling one’s body, the wearer communicates, “I am more than meets the eye.”
