Habit
The Rule of St. Benedict does not stipulate a particular colour for the monastic habit, and the habit of unbleached, undyed, wool has not been unknown among Benedictines. However, the colour most associated with the Benedictine tradition is black, (hence the name "black monk" used to refer to a Benedictine monk), and that is the colour currently worn by Orthodox Benedictines.
The first layer of the habit is the tunic, which is secured in place by a belt. This is the form of habit worn by oblates during their period of novitiate. The next layer is the monastic scapular, which is a tabard-like garment worn over the tunic. The tunic, belt, and scapular, (with a head-veil for women), form the complete habit worn by oblates while in the monastic enclosure and by monastics during the nNovitiate. Outside of the monastery, the oblates simply wear a reduced scapular and the Saint Benedict Medal under civilian clothing. When the monastic makes his solemn profession, he is tonsured and invested with the cowl.
Monastics and oblates alike, upon their repose, are buried in the habit proper to their order.
Read more about this topic: Order Of Saint Benedict (Orthodox)
Famous quotes containing the word habit:
“Anyone with a real taste for solitude who indulges that taste encounters the dangers of any other drug-taker. The habit grows. You become an addict.... Absorbed in the visions of solitude, human beings are only interruptions. What voice can equal the voices of solitude? What sights equal the movement of a single day’s tide of light across the floor boards of one room? What drama be as continuously absorbing as the interior one?”
—Jessamyn West (1902–1984)
“The way of Providence is a little rude. The habit of the snake and spider, the snap of the tiger and other leapers and bloody jumpers, the crackle of the bones of his prey in the coil of the anaconda,—these are in the system, and our habits like theirs. You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughter-house is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity, expensive races,—race living at the expense of race.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The habit of common and continuous speech is a symptom of mental deficiency. It proceeds from not knowing what is going on in other people’s minds.”
—Walter Bagehot (1826–1877)