In the Book of Genesis, God makes garments of skin for Adam
and Eve and clothes them. Gianfranco Ravasi, a Roman Catholic Cardinal and de
facto cultural minister of the Vatican, reflected on the meaning of liturgical
vestments while he was in New York with prominent designers to preview the
upcoming exhibit, “Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination” at
the Metropolitan Museum of Art. That fashion could point to the transcendent
would seem to go against the ostensibly fundamental dichotomy between the superficial and the
significant. The religious quest can be
understood in such terms as transcending the image to the underlying ineffable
mystery that must characterize the transcendent.
The full essay is at "Liturgical Vestments as Doorways."
