Fashion Show Invocation

I was asked to give the invocation at this year's U of D Jesuit Mothers' Club Fashion Show. Due to several requests, I post the text below:

I would like to begin this morning with a brief reflection written by Saint Augustine of Hippo:

And what is the object of my love? I asked the earth and it said: ‘It is not I.” I asked all the things on the earth, and they all made the same confession. I asked the sea, I scoured its depths, I asked the living creatures that creep, and they all responded: ‘We are not your God, look beyond us.’ I asked heaven, sun, moon and star; they said: ‘Nor are we the God whom you seek.’ And I said to all these things around me: ‘Tell me of my God who you are not, tell me something about him.’ And with a great voice they cried out: ‘He made us’. My question was the attention I gave to them and their response was their beauty.

Heavenly Father, it is beauty that has brought us together. Please bless all of those gathered here today: the organizers who have given of themselves so generously, the models who show forth the imaginations of designers and the talent of producers, and all those gathered here in a celebration of beauty. May today’s celebration of fashion remind us that our friendship with you will never go out of style and, as we continue our Lenten pilgrimage, may we follow the greatest of models – your Son, Jesus Christ – who calls us all to be “Women and Men for Others.”

Make it work, O Lord, and let the celebration of beauty begin.

Through Jesus Christ our Lord,

Amen.