People often wonder why a priest wears vestments at the Mass. The short answer is that this is how he clothes his own self and becomes “just” a priest of Jesus Christ. Mass vestments, like all church vestments, are meant to point away from the person who is wearing them to what that person is doing for the worship of the Church. The vestments in a sense “depersonalize” the minister who wears them, so that he and his own personality do not get in the way of the celebration of the Mass. The priest says a special prayer as he puts on each vestment.
The priest’s vestments used today developed during the first few centuries of the Church and often have their origin the secular dress of that time. The first vestment that priest puts on is the amice, a rectangular white linen vestment with ties at the top end. The priest touches the top of his head with the amice before putting it around his neck and then ties it to his middle with the two ties. The prayer he says while putting on the amice refers to the “helmet of salvation.” The next vestment is the alb, a long white tunic that some say has its origin in the tunic of Christ that he wore and was stripped of at the Crucifixion. Another symbolism is the white garment that those who were baptized were clothed in in the first centuries of the Church. The prayer asks God to “make me pure by the blood of the Lamb who died for my sins.”
The priest then puts on the cincture, a long cord that he wraps around his waist. The prayer as he puts on the cincture ask that God “will gird him with the cincture of purity” as he prepares for Mass. The next vestment is the maniple, a piece of fabric matching the stole and chasuble. This came from the large handkerchief that Roman men wore to wipe the sweat from their brow. The prayer refers to the “maniple of toil and sorrow that I may reap the reward of my labors.” Next comes the stole, in some ways the most important vestment, because it is the symbol of the Sacrament of Holy Orders. The stole is a long piece of fabric in the color of the day. In the Traditional Mass the priest crosses his stole over his breast. A bishop wears the stole hanging down straight. The prayer asks for the restoration of the “stole of immortality that we all lost at the sin of our first parents”, and continues with an acknowledgment of the priest’s unworthiness to serve at the altar Finally the priest dons the chasuble, whose color is the color of the Mass that is being celebrated. This vestment can be in several forms: gothic, a more full cut, or Roman, which is less full in body. The prayer refers to the “sweet yoke and burden that is Christ.”
And so clothed the priest goes to the altar of God, the God of his joy and gladness, to do what a priest does: offer the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the re-presentation of Calvary, for the living and the dead.
Fr. Richard G. Cipolla
