“Wear Proper Clothes To Respect The Sanctity of The House Of God”

Well, we really should. I remember when my brothers and I were kids, our parents would force us to wear polo shirts and pants (with the shirt tucked so deep, or rather the pants worn so high it made us look like we had unusually small torsos! Baduy!). There was a time when churchgoers were donned in their most formal attire. We were taught to dress that way. There was logic in this after all. Going to mass was a time when we would be communing with God and of course, each of us would want to look our best! There was a time when the sentiments and devotion of people flowed naturally outwards and expressed through their appearance and deeds, and not the other way around.

Eight years ago I had my own website which I called Goodness Bites which featured my artwork, literature and lecture materials. But the highlight of my old website was a comic strip series through which I expressed my funny experiences and thoughts on churchgoing. Some Catholic websites even featured these comic strips regularly. This is one of my most "syndicated" comic panel:

I wasn't able to maintain my website after Angelfire changed their policies about ad placements (My website was a mess with the ads). This was during the pre-CSS era. I didn't have the patience and ability to fix it up, so the website eventually died. And then just recently, I saw this commercial airing in TV:

You could imagine my surprise and delight upon watching this. I am not exactly sure if my comic strip inspired the director behind the commercial, but you couldn't deny that the "Christ, what a body!" concept is basically the same, not to mention the similarity between the elements of the video and the comic strip. My brother told me to invoke my intellectual property rights and demand compensation. I don't know. I couldn't. There was something not right if I did that. But it would be something if the person behind this commercial really did get inspiration from my comic strip which perhaps he saw 8 years ago. And then he got this opportunity to take this idea to video format so it could reach a broader audience. That really would be something.

Having this chance to see this, it makes me rethink about how I myself prepare for the mass. It's so sad that nowadays, I could go to mass wearing slippers and shorts without much thinking and so much for my own convenience. I know people say what's important is how sincere your thoughts and prayers are. But then perhaps when I have the ilk to say this, I'm just creating an alibi to justify my apparent lack of concern. We are after all physical beings with the need to "experience" things. God's glory is so great we don't even have the words to describe (or even the capacity to imagine). But He reveals Himself to us in ways that we can "experience" him: through the world we presently live in. It is I think right to express our love for Him in the only way we presently can: through the world we currently live in. The manner in which we lead all aspects of our lives, whether how small or large, is a natural reflection or outcome of our sincere beliefs and virtues. The world view has truly become so skewed that we now have the need to be constantly reminded in the face of our demand in expressing our human choices. Time to rethink.