More Reasons Orthodox Christian Women Wear Head Coverings
Part 3
Last year, long before I did any real research on Christian head covering, we visited an Orthodox church in another town, in a different jurisdiction, and in a different region of our country. We were slightly early and I was wearing my usual cream-colored scarf. I watched as families, students, singles and older people filtered in and eventually packed much of the space inside. Yet, as I glanced around the church, only one other woman was wearing a head covering. This posed a dilemma for me that I hadn’t considered: Should I attempt to fit in and shed the scarf to join the other women? Or, should I keep the covering on and go with it?
At that moment, I had to confront why I cover my head to begin with. Was I doing it to fit in with the culture? Or did I have real convictions about it?
Then, looking up at the icon of the Theotokos to see her head covered with a blue veil, I knew I was in good company. She is, after all, our role model as the first Christian and the most blessed among women. I kept my covering on at the service and was thankful for the momentary crisis because it forced me to take the practice beyond the surface. I needed real reasons to wear the scarf other than because other pious women were doing it. I became grounded in wearing a covering because I wanted to be obedient to the tradition and because I wanted to be close to the Theotokos. Now, if I’m visiting a church and no one is wearing a covering, I look to the Theotokos and know this is what I’m supposed to do. If I forget my scarf and have to go bareheaded, I really feel like I’m missing something very important during the service.
We established in part 2 of the series that female Christian head covering is an historic tradition rooted in scripture and the teachings of the fathers that has been passed down for centuries. And, as I mentioned above, there are other reasons that are also compelling.
First of all, the presence of the veil over the head gives one the feeling of being more prayerful and holy. For my part, I feel more connected to the historic church as I’m wearing the covering. My priest told me to wear the covering if I felt holy or prayerful wearing it. He was right; I did. I felt particularly connected to the worship and prayer, because I was following the Holy Tradition, and because I was wearing a special garment, a vestment, that I only appareled in church.
Also, many women say they wear it out of respect for the holy space of the church. When I was in Italy in 2004, most of the cathedrals there required women to have their bare shoulders covered, no spaghetti straps or tube tops. These beautiful churches would have someone posted at the door to offer a scarf for women to cover their shoulders coming in from the hot June sun. If you read the travel blogs you will know about the tradition and be prepared with a little scarf in your bag. There is something about respecting a holy space by wearing modest and appropriate clothing. This modesty and appropriateness transfers to the covering of the head in our home churches. We are showing love and respect for these spaces when we cover our heads.
Additionally, there is a sacredness to it. It is a mystical act of coming under authority, following the tradition. Women wear a covering to imitate the Theotokos, and those holy women saints represented in our iconography, many of them martyrs, mothers, virgins, and bold women standing against persecution in the time of ruthless dictators. I’ve learned recently that the most sacred things in church are veiled: the chalice, the Theotokos, the women. Because women are sacred as life givers and as precious children of God, they are veiled. The veil or head covering is the woman’s vestment. And the sacredness of the vestment is a mystical component to our worship.
Finally, the veil is old world. Wearing it rejects modernist thinking and says, I want the whole faith, the whole tradition: “Be it done to me as you have said,” says the Theotokos when Gabriel announces that she will conceive a child as a virgin by the Holy Spirit. In wearing the veil, the woman submits her own authority to the higher authority of the Church. She chooses it, just as the Theotokos choose to submit to the will of God to bear the Christ-child.
There are certainly many more reasons that women wear head coverings in church. These reasons I’ve listed were the most compelling for me as I was reading and studying this topic.
In our next installment of this series, we will look at the Protecting Veil Icon and see what lessons can be uncovered there about female Christian head covering.
