Be Veiled, Virgin

But since we have touched on one particular piece of empty observance, it will be no trouble to put our brand on the others as well — all the practices that can fairly be charged with vanity, if, that is, they are kept without the authority of any command from the Lord or from the apostles. Things of this kind belong not to religion but to superstition. They are studied, forced, a matter of curiosity rather than of reason, and they deserve to be checked at the very least on this ground, that they put us on a level with the nations. Take the custom some people have of praying with their cloaks off: that is how the nations approach their idols. If keeping it were fitting, the apostles, who do teach us about how to be dressed for prayer, would have taken it into their instructions — unless somebody thinks it was for prayer that Paul left his cloak behind with Carpus! God, apparently, would not listen to men praying with their cloaks on — the God who plainly heard the three holy men in the Babylonian king’s furnace, praying in their trousers and their turbans. [a]

Then there is the custom some have of sitting down when prayer is over, and I can see no reason for it except the one children give. Suppose that Hermas, whose book is generally titled The Shepherd, had finished his prayer and, instead of sitting down on his bed, done something else: would we hold that up as a thing to be observed too? Of course not. As it is, the sentence “When I had prayed, and had sat down on my bed” is put there simply for the order of the story, not as a model of discipline. Otherwise we shall have to pray nowhere except where there is a bed — and anyone who sits in a chair or on a bench will be acting against that book. [f]

Besides, since the nations do the same thing, sitting down after they have bowed to their little images, the practice deserves to be censured among us on that ground alone, that it is kept up in the worship of idols. And there is a further charge against it: irreverence — which even the nations themselves would understand, if they had any sense. If it is disrespectful to sit under the eye, and right in front of the eye, of the man you most revere and honor, how much more irreligious is it to do that under the eye of the living God, while the angel of prayer is still standing there? Unless we mean to reproach God that praying has worn us out.

We commend our prayers to God better, though, when we pray with modesty and humility — with our hands not lifted too high but raised in a measured and becoming way, and without lifting our faces too boldly either. For that tax collector who prayed with humility and dejection, not just in his petition but in his face as well, went home counted righteous rather than the brazen Pharisee. The sound of our voice should be kept down as well. Otherwise, if we are to be heard for our noise, what enormous windpipes we shall need! But God is not a hearer of the voice; he is a hearer of the heart, just as he is its inspector. Even the demon of the Pythian oracle says: [i]

Do God’s ears wait for a sound? Then how did Jonah’s prayer find its way out to heaven from the bottom of the whale’s belly, through the insides of so huge a beast, up from the very depths, through so great a weight of sea? What do people who pray too loudly gain, except that they annoy whoever is next to them? By making their petitions audible, are they doing anything less wrong than praying in public?

Another custom has now become widespread. People who are fasting hold back the kiss of peace, which is the seal of prayer, after praying with the brothers. But when is peace more to be settled with the brothers than at the very time when, because of some religious observance, our prayer goes up with more acceptance — so that they may share in our observance themselves, and be softened toward dealing with their brother about their own peace? What prayer is complete if it is cut off from the “holy kiss”? Whom does peace get in the way of, while he is doing his Lord a service? What kind of sacrifice is it that men walk away from without peace? [l]

Whatever our prayer may be, it will be no better than keeping the command that tells us to hide our fasting — and by holding back the kiss we are now known to be fasting. But even if there is some reason for the practice, still, so as not to offend against that command, you may perhaps put off your “peace” at home, where it is not possible to keep your fast entirely secret. Anywhere else, where you can hide your observance, you ought to remember the command. That way you can satisfy what Discipline requires out of doors, and what custom requires at home. And so, on the day of the Passover too, when the keeping of the fast is general and, so to speak, public, we rightly give up the kiss, since we are not concerned to hide anything we are all doing together.

It is the same with the days of Stations. Most people think they should not be present at the prayers where the offering is made, on the ground that the Station is broken by receiving the Lord’s Body. Does the thanksgiving, then, cancel a service devoted to God, or tie it more tightly to God? Will your Station not be more solemn if you have also stood at God’s altar? When the Lord’s Body has been received and kept back, both things are secured: sharing in the sacrifice, and carrying out your duty. And if the “Station” took its name from the example of military life — for we are God’s soldiers too — then of course no signal of gladness or of sadness sounded through the camp does away with the soldiers’ posts. Gladness will carry out the discipline more willingly, sadness more carefully. [p]

As far as the dress of women goes, the variety of practice forces us — men of no standing whatever — to treat the subject, presumptuously enough, after the most holy apostle has treated it; except that it will not be presumptuous if we treat it in agreement with the apostle. On modesty in dress and ornament, Peter’s rule is just as plain. With the same mouth, because with the same Spirit, as Paul, he checks the glory of clothes, and the pride of gold, and the elaborate hairdressing of a prostitute. [t]

But there is one point kept inconsistently from church to church, and it has to be dealt with: whether virgins ought to be veiled or not. Those who allow virgins to go without a head covering seem to rest on this — that the apostle did not define “virgins” by name, but “women,” as the ones to be veiled; and that he did not name the sex in general, so as to say “females,” but one class within the sex, by saying “women.” For if he had named the sex by saying “females,” he would have made his rule absolute for every woman; but by naming one class within the sex, he separates off another class by saying nothing about it. He could, they say, either have named “virgins” specially, or covered everyone at once with the short word “females.” [u]

The people who make this concession ought to think about the nature of the word itself — what “woman” means from the very earliest records of the sacred writings. There they will find that it is the name of the sex, not a class within the sex: God gave Eve the surname “woman” and “female” when she had not yet known a man. (“Female” marks the sex generally; “woman” marks a class within the sex.) So, since Eve was called by the word “woman” while she was still unwed, that word has been made to belong to a virgin as well. [v]

And it is no wonder that the apostle — guided, of course, by the same Spirit by whom all the divine Scripture was drawn up, the book of Genesis with it — has used that very word in writing “women,” which by the example of the unwed Eve applies to a virgin too. In fact every other passage agrees with it. By the very fact that he has not named “virgins” — as he does in another place, where he is teaching about marrying — he says plainly enough that his remark is about every woman and about the whole sex, and that no distinction is being made between a virgin and anyone else, since he does not name her at all. A man who elsewhere, where the difference calls for it, remembers to make the distinction, and makes it by calling each kind by its own name, means, where he makes no distinction and names neither kind, that no difference is to be understood.

And what about the fact that in Greek, the language the apostle wrote his letters in, it is usual to say “women” rather than “females” — that is, gynaikas rather than theleias? So if that word, which in translation stands for what “female” stands for, is regularly used in place of the name of the sex, then he did name the sex when he said gynaika; and the virgin is included in the sex.

Besides, the statement is plain: “Every woman,” he says, “praying and prophesying with her head uncovered dishonors her own head.” And what is “every woman,” if not woman of every age, of every rank, of every condition? By saying “every” he leaves nothing of womanhood out — just as he leaves nothing of manhood out from going uncovered, since he says in the same way, “Every man.” So, as in the male sex, under the name “man,” even the youth is forbidden to be veiled, in the female sex too, under the name “woman,” even the virgin is told to be veiled. In each sex let the younger age follow the discipline of the older. Or else let the male “virgins” be veiled as well, if the female virgins are not veiled on the ground that they are not mentioned by name. Let “man” and “youth” be different, if “woman” and “virgin” are different.

In fact it is “because of the angels” that he says women must be veiled, since it was on account of “the daughters of men” that angels revolted from God. Who, then, would argue that only “women” — that is, by their own definition, ones already married and no longer virgins — were the objects of angelic lust? Unless virgins are incapable of outstanding beauty and of finding lovers! No, let us see whether it was not virgins alone that they wanted, since Scripture says “the daughters of men,” when it might just as well have said “the wives of men,” or “females.” And when it says, “And they took them to themselves for wives,” it says so on this ground, that the ones “taken for wives” are of course the ones who do not yet carry that title. It would have put things differently about women who were not without it. So the ones named are as much without widowhood as without virginity. That is how completely Paul, by naming the sex in general, has mixed “daughters” and the kinds together in the class.

Again, when he says that “nature herself” — which has given hair to women as a covering and an ornament — “teaches that veiling is the duty of females,” has not the same covering and the same honor of the head been given to virgins as well? If “it is shameful” for a woman to be shorn, it is just as shameful for a virgin. Then from those on whom one and the same law of the head is laid, one and the same discipline of the head is required — and it reaches even to the virgins whom their childhood protects, since a virgin was called “female” from the very first.

Israel, in short, keeps this custom too. And if Israel did not keep it, our own Law, enlarged and filled out, would claim the addition for itself; let it be excused for laying the veil on virgins as well. Under our own way of life, let the age that does not yet know its own sex keep the privilege of simplicity. For when it fell to Eve and Adam to become “wise,” they at once veiled what they had learned to know. At any rate, in the case of girls whose girlhood has changed into maturity, their age ought to remember what it owes to nature, and to discipline as well; for they are being moved over into the rank of “women,” both in their persons and in what they do. No one is a “virgin” from the time she is capable of marriage, seeing that by then her age has been wedded to its own husband — that is, to time.

“But some particular virgin has dedicated herself to God. From that very moment she changes the way she wears her hair, and turns all her clothing into a woman’s.” Then let her keep that character completely, and perform the whole part of a “virgin”: what she conceals for God’s sake, let her cover right over. It is our business to entrust what the grace of God works in us to the knowledge of God alone, so that we do not take from men the reward we hope for from God. Why do you uncover before God what you cover before men? Will you be more modest in the street than in the church? If your self-dedication is a grace of God, and you received it, “why do you boast,” he says, “as though you had not received it?” Why, by putting yourself on show, do you pass judgment on others? Is it that your boasting invites other people to something good? No — you yourself run the risk of losing if you boast, and you drive others into the same danger. Whatever is taken up out of a love of boasting is easily destroyed.

Be veiled, virgin, if you are a virgin; you have reason to blush. If you are a virgin, shrink from many eyes. Let no one marvel at your face; let no one notice your falsehood. You do well to take on a married woman’s character falsely, if you veil your head — no, you do not even seem to take it on falsely, since you are wedded to Christ. You have handed your body over to him; act as your Husband’s discipline requires. If he tells other men’s brides to be veiled, then his own, of course, much more.

“But no one man is to think that the arrangement made by the man before him should be overturned.” Many people give up their own judgment, and its consistency, to other people’s custom. Granted that virgins are not to be compelled to be veiled: at the very least, those who are veiled of their own accord should not be forbidden it. They cannot deny that they are virgins either; they are content, secure in a good conscience before God, to damage their own reputation.

As for girls who are engaged, though, I can pronounce and testify with confidence, “beyond my small measure,” that they are to be veiled from the day on which they first shuddered at a man’s touch, by kiss and by hand. For in them everything has been married in advance: their age, by maturity; their flesh, by their age; their spirit, by awareness; their modesty, by the experience of the kiss; their hope, by expectation; their mind, by willing it. And Rebekah is example enough for us. When her betrothed had been pointed out to her, she veiled herself for marriage simply on recognizing him.

In the matter of kneeling, too, prayer is subject to differing practice, because of a few people who abstain from kneeling on the Sabbath. Since this disagreement is particularly on trial before the churches, the Lord will give his grace that those who differ may either yield, or else hold their opinion without offending anyone else. As for us, just as we received it, it is only on the day of the Lord’s resurrection that we ought to guard against kneeling, and against every posture and duty of anxiety as well, putting off even our business, so as to give no place to the devil. It is the same through the season of Pentecost, which we mark off by that same solemn gladness. [ag]

But who would hesitate, any day, to fall down before God, at least in the first prayer with which we enter the daylight? At fasts and at Stations, moreover, no prayer should be made without kneeling and the other customary marks of humility; for then we are not only praying, but pleading, and making satisfaction to the Lord our God. About the times of prayer nothing at all has been prescribed, except plainly “to pray at every time and in every place.” But how “in every place,” when we are forbidden to pray in public? “In every place,” he means, that opportunity or even necessity has made suitable. What the apostles did in jail, in the hearing of the prisoners — where they “began praying and singing to God” — is not reckoned to have been done against the command; nor is what Paul did on the ship, where in front of everyone he “gave thanks to God.” [ai]

As for the time, though, keeping certain hours besides will not be without profit — the common hours, I mean, that mark off the intervals of the day: the third, the sixth, the ninth, which we can find in the Scriptures to have been more solemn than the rest. The first pouring out of the Holy Spirit on the disciples gathered together happened at “the third hour.” Peter, on the day he saw the vision of everything held in common, shown in that small vessel, had gone up to the higher part of the house to pray “at the sixth hour.” The same apostle was going into the temple with John “at the ninth hour” when he restored the paralyzed man to health. [aj]

These practices stand without any command requiring them; still, it may be granted a good thing to establish some definite rule of thumb, which both adds weight to the call to pray and, as if by a law, tears us out of our business for that duty. So — the thing we read that Daniel kept as well, in line, of course, with Israel’s discipline — let us pray at the very least three times a day, debtors as we are to Three: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. That is on top of our regular prayers, which are owed without anyone reminding us, at the coming of the light and of the night. And besides, it is fitting for believers not to take food and not to go to the bath before putting a prayer in first; for the refreshments and nourishments of the spirit are to come before those of the flesh, and heavenly things before earthly ones.

You will not send a brother who has come into your house away without prayer. “Have you seen a brother?” Scripture says. “You have seen your Lord” — and especially “a stranger,” in case he should turn out to be “an angel.” And again, when you are the one received by brothers, you will not put earthly refreshments before heavenly ones, for your faith will be judged on the spot. Or else how will you say, as the command has it, “Peace to this house,” unless you exchange peace with the people in the house? [an]

People who are more diligent in prayer are in the habit of adding to their prayers the “Hallelujah” and psalms of that kind, at the closes of which the whole company answers back. And of course every arrangement is an excellent one that aims, all together, at lifting up and honoring God by bringing him a prayer made rich, like a choice victim. [ao]