I have always been uncomfortable with prayer/chapel veils for Catholic women. Growing up in Catholic school, only the Home School Association families at our First Friday masses wore them, so naturally I thought them odd, awkward, and out of place, just like those kids. (Ah, the "innocence" of childhood thought!) It wasn't until this June, when I attended GIVEN, that I began to understand what the veil really meant, and the beautiful power it imparts.Several young women at the conference wore their veils during mass, and of course my initial gut reaction was, well now we know who the super Catholic women are - an absurd thought in an environment of all super (awesome) Catholic women, myself included. On the last day, I sat at brunch with a woman who had decided over the course of the week to change her action plan to making and selling affordable prayer veils. She hadn't grown up wearing a veil, but rather it was a conscious choice she had recently made, and it had transformed her prayer life, she said. The veil signaled to her a vital shift in where she was and what she was doing. She was draped in the presence of God. She said to try it out, I might like it more than I thought I would.
