(ZENIT News – Porta Luz / Madrid, 28.05.2024).- It might be that you don’t think of wearing a veil (also known as mantillas) when you go to Mass, or imagine that it’s an article that’s booming, however, since Lily Wilson started to sell them, her company, Veils by Lily, has grown astoundingly by 2,000%. “I started in 2010 in a corner of my kitchen, attending to between 30 and 60 orders a month. Now we are 12 people working in an office in Kimmswick, Missouri’s historic city. We attend to an average of 900 orders a month, including wholesale orders,” Wilson said to The Register.
Wilson learned about chapel veils thanks to a friend, who invited her to pray in the Saint Francis of Sales Oratory in Saint Louis. While there, she saw a woman wearing a chapel veil made with lace, which she thought was very beautiful. She left the Oratory with a fixed idea.
She looked for a similar lace in a fabrics store and learnt to use a sewing machine. Her mother, who was visiting at the time, suggested she create a Website and start to sell them. “So I did that. Orders began to arrive and soon I was so busy that I had to leave my part-time job to dedicate myself to this,” said Wilson.
Although in the past it was very common, and is even mentioned in the 1917 Code of Canon Law, today the use of a veil isn’t obligatory for women. Any woman, if she so wishes, can wear a veil during Mass, as well as during Eucharistic Adoration. “It’s good that it’s no longer compulsory, in my opinion, because now we can do so freely and with purity of intention,” said Wilson, stating that “many women” have confided in her “that their relationship with God and their experience of Mass have become deeper since they started to wear a veil.”
Jane Mary-Gianna Yeak, foundress of the Filia Dei Veils company said something similar to The Register, as did those of the E-vintage Veils sewing studio located in the depth of the tranquil mountains of Pennsylvania. In the United Kingdom also, Di Clara, property of a Catholic mother, not only makes veils but also vestments and other devotional articles. Founded by Care Short to support her three small children and her husband, who were recovering from a long-term illness, her work culminated with the presentation of a chasuble to Pope Benedict XVI.
In Australia, Magnificat Veils attends to the country and New Zealand. The owners say the objective is to “make veils more accessible to women of Australia and New Zealand.” Directed by Niña and Rafael Nepomuceno, a young husband and wife duo of Melbourne, Niña said that “when she was a young woman growing up” she saw “the beauty of using a mantilla or veil at Mass” and always wondered why so few women knew this Catholic tradition.
“The veil . . . to adore Our Lord”
For Lily Wilson, “the veil is an invitation to adore Our Lord, an acknowledgement of the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, a sign of humility before Him who is present during the Mass and Whom we adore in the tabernacle, and in this case, paradoxically, it’s also a celebration of women’s great dignity.”
Although many layers could be discovered for the use of the veil, Wilson said that the main one has to do with nuptial images that Saint Paul uses, to describe God’s relationship with the soul and Christ’s with the Church. “The veil becomes an act of reverence and humility before God, when we say: ‘You are my God and I surrender to your loving Will for life.’”
A “veil influencer” in the young generations
Although the number of sales indicate that the use of the veil has become much more common than it was 15 years ago, it’s not yet something massive.
However, a great promoter of women’s veils to pray is changing that among young women. It’s former model Leah Darrow who, after returning to the Catholic Church in 2017, has written several books, among them “The Other Side of Beauty. Embracing God’s Vision for Love and True Worth,” in which she also highlights the role of the veil when it comes to adding beauty to a woman’s prayers.
Anna Tebeling, third year student at Wyoming Catholic College and client of Veils by Lily, said that she started to use a veil three years ago. She said to The Register that she likes the emphasis it places on the soul’s relationship with Christ as Bride. For her, the veil helped to readjust her mentality and posture before the Lord, the exterior sign helped the interior disposition: “While the veil covers, it also adorns.”
Renowned priest Mike Schmitz encourages women to feel free to use a veil regarding it as a sacramental . . .
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