December 12, 2020
I chose to
wear a red dress to Mass last week. It was a very intentional choice. I’d
always had mixed feelings about the color because of its association with
power. And for women, that power was usually tied to their beauty and sexuality,
not their virtue or inner strength. For me, wearing that red dress was a formal
exercise of surrender, obedience, and courage.
The femme
fatale with questionable morals was usually depicted in a red dress in art
history, one of whom was most notably, Mary Magdalene. She was taken for the adulteress
in the New Testament and mistakenly assumed a prostitute. But then there was
the story of Maria Goretti, the virgin-martyr and celebrated saint who fought
off the sexual advances of a man who eventually stabbed her 14 times in the
story In Garments All Red. In this case, the red dress echoed the martyrdom
that came with the spilling of blood.
When I look
upon the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe, I can’t help but notice that she too was
imaged in a red dress. Born without the stain of sin, she is usually dressed in
white, symbolizing her purity. But in the case of Our Lady of Guadalupe, red symbolized
both fertility and passion, as the expectant Virgin Mother was shrouded with a blue-ish-teal
mantle, backgrounded by the rays of the sun. She was warned that her heart would
be pierced by a sword, but she faced the myriad of life uncertainties in faith
and with great surrender, obedience, and courage anyways. She was a woman of great
strength who did not harness her power through the charms and manipulative ways
of the harlot, yet both could be seen in fiery red. Our Lady was detached from the ways of this world. And although it was not her
blood that was spilled, she, herself, was the outer vestment of the child she
carried whose innocent blood would be shed to wash away the sins of the world--even the clueless and the ones who would never show any appreciation for what he did for them.
And so today, I appear at Mass in that red dress in the 11th hour to commemorate the saintly image of a women who clothed the masterpiece within with the color of love and great hope, who carried the child who would be born into a world of great scandal and contradictions as men would break their own laws to feel like they could control the uncontrollable. For no power is greater than that of the power of God! Our Lady of Guadalupe, pray for us!