If you come early enough before any hour of community prayer at the Dominican House of Studies, you may notice a curious gesture among the friars. As they pass in front of one another to reach their seats, they will often take hold of their scapular—the apron-like part of their white habit—and kiss it.
Friars keep this custom of kissing the scapular as a regular way of requesting forgiveness from or expressing thanks to their brothers while maintaining prayerful silence in the chapel and other areas of the cloister. In short, it serves as the Dominican equivalent of a simple “excuse me.”
Friars also kiss their scapular when they arrive late to meetings, loudly drop books in the hallways, or make mistakes while chanting the Liturgy of the Hours; the list of possible faults goes on. Over the span of a week, a single friar might kiss his scapular no fewer than 77 times (Matt 18:21–22).
Although this Dominican version of the ordinary “excuse me” provides one routine way for friars to maintain the bonds of fraternity, it remains only one of many customs in religious life pertaining to forgiveness. From the moment we enter the Order and receive the habit, we acknowledge our need for mercy. Kneeling before the superior, we declare that the supreme good we seek is “God’s mercy and yours.” This supplication echoes throughout our common life. We confess our failings to the community at the chapter of faults and we ask our brothers to pardon our mistakes upon receiving fraternal correction in private. We begin each day by reciting the Confiteor at our conventual Mass and bring it to a close with another Confiteor at Compline, once more confessing our sins “to God, to blessed Mary ever-Virgin, to blessed Dominic our father, to all the Saints,” and to our brothers before retiring to our cells for the night.
Dominican friars seem to say sorry to each other all the time! But the regularity with which we apologize to and forgive one another does not trivialize the weight of these acts of mercy.
The point of asking for pardon over daily, even if minor, infractions is that humility and contrition can become habitual parts of one’s character. In other words, kissing the scapular regularly can form you into the sort of person who is readily able to ask for forgiveness.
While most of us will never have scapulars to kiss when we rudely interrupt someone, every Christian has ample opportunity to cultivate the same humility and self-awareness. Maybe that looks like sending a short check-in message to a family member with whom you had a disagreement last year, expressing appreciation for the coworker who picked up your slack at work, or owning up to having spoken impatiently to a fellow parishioner.
Little acts of repentance of this sort have preserved the peace of monasteries and convents for centuries. But for all Christians, they can be occasions for recognizing our incessant need for God’s mercy. And what great mercy there is! The graces Jesus Christ won for us through the perfect sacrifice of the Cross flow steadily today through the Church. This bountiful and saving mercy is freely available to us at all times. It helps us avoid evil and do good, which includes reconciling ourselves to others. Moved by the Holy Spirit, we need only recognize our need for it, ask for it, receive it, and cooperate with it so as to become more conformed to Christ.
A Dominican can kiss his scapular, but each of us, in our own way, can take up the spirit of the custom and make some simple, meek gesture from the heart. A regular rhythm of self-examination, contrition, reconciliation, and resolution to follow the Lord more closely can begin with just such a gesture: a short word of remorse, a simple word of thanks, or any other modest act of charity in the ordinary moments of daily life.
The Lord will accept our humble scapular kisses in their various shapes and sizes, today and always.
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Photo by Fr. Lawrence Lew, O.P. (used with permission)
