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Liturgical colours

In the Occidental Christian tradition, each Sunday the church (and/or the officiant) is decorated with a special colour. Each has a sense (generally forgotten by the assembly). In my own tradition, the Reformed one, we don’t use these colours at all, but since I’m now mainly in a Lutheran parish (my Church is a union of a Reformed Church and a Lutheran one, so we have both traditions), I discover them and like their symbolism.

These are the colours in usage in my Church (small details could change in other traditions), even if you’re not Christian it’s an interesting trivia:

violet (the colour of the waiting time, meditation and repentance, thus the colour of Advent and Lent);

white (the colour of the joy, thus the colour of the main feasts like Christmas or Easter);

green (the colour of life, growth and hope, thus the colour of the “ordinary time”, i.e. generally not linked to a special feast);

red (the colour of the Holy Ghost, thus the colour of the feasts especially linked to it, like Pentecost or Church-related feasts);

rose (I’ll describe it below).

My favourite one may be the “rose”. I don’t know how common this word is in English, but I discovered that it was used for a shade of pink between red and purple. It’s thus not exactly the shade used in the liturgy, which is generally a normal pink (in French we also use the word “rose”, but it’s our word for “pink”, we don’t use a special word).

A photo of the Pope Francis wearing rose

The signification of this colour is rooted in the others. If violet is the colour of repentance and white the colour of joy, rose, which is here thought as a mix of violet and white, is the colour of the joy *within* the time of repentance. We use it only during two Sundays: *Gaudete* (which in Latin signifies “rejoice, you all!”, the third Sunday of Advent) and *Laetare* (“be gladdened!”, the fourth Sunday of Lent). Both are Sundays where we should be meditating and repentant, thus wear violet, but during these Sundays the proximity of the joy of the feast (Christmas for Advent, Easter for Lent) is already irradiating.

Tomorrow it will be the *Laetare* Sunday. Be gladdened!

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Author : Adou (CC BY-SA 4.0)

mailto:3x37zj4e@anonaddy.me

Subject: Religion