No offence, Deacon, but as great as the Pope is, he is a man and a human being with a human being’s tendencies to judge me by my appearance and by the first impression I make on him. So I would dress up for the Pope in deference to his human feelings and foibles.
Jesus and the Father have no such foibles. They know my heart regardless of what I wear or don’t wear. And I hope that I don’t respect the divine law so little as to ONLY wear modest and decent clothing on Sundays - it’s what I wear every day.
Modest and decent, yes. Expensive, expensive-looking or ‘Sunday best’? No. What kind of a God would be pleased with a person who thinks He only sees what I wear on Sunday and dresses differently to every other day, as if the other six days of the week somehow don’t matter?
I respectfully disagree. Joseph Ratzinger is a man. Pope Benedict XVI is “The bishop of Rome, successor of St. Peter, chief of the whole Church,
and the Vicar of Christ on earth.”
We wear our Sunday best to Mass on Sundays because the third commandment tells us: “Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days shall labor, and do all your work; but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God; in it you shall not do any
work.”
Sunday is not the same as the days on which we labor. Sunday is a day when we give back to God. The other six days don’t ‘not matter’ but they are not the same as Sunday. Sunday is a day set apart.
Snippets from the CCC -
I. THE SABBATH DAY
2168 The third commandment of the Decalogue recalls the holiness of the sabbath: "The seventh day is a sabbath of solemn rest, holy to the LORD."92
2169 In speaking of the sabbath Scripture recalls creation: "For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day and hallowed it."93
II. THE LORD’S DAY
This is the day which the LORD has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.103
The day of the Resurrection: the new creation
2174 Jesus rose from the dead "on the first day of the week."104 Because it is the “first day,” the day of Christ’s Resurrection recalls the first creation. Because it is the “eighth day” following the sabbath,105 it symbolizes the new creation ushered in by Christ’s Resurrection. For Christians it has become the first of all days, the first of all feasts, the Lord’s Day (he kuriake hemera, dies dominica) Sunday
2176 The celebration of Sunday observes the moral commandment inscribed by nature in the human heart to render to God an outward, visible, public, and regular worship “as a sign of his universal beneficence to all.”
109 Sunday worship fulfills the moral command of the Old Covenant, taking up its rhythm and spirit in the weekly celebration of the Creator and Redeemer of his people.