Liturgical Colors
The Christian world is a world of color. It always has been. The first Christians were enormously preoccupied with color. In the Protoevangelium of James ― a second-century Christian retelling of Jesus’s birth not included in the Bible ― there are scenes where the author carries on about “the gold, and the white, and the fine linen, and the silk, and the blue, and the scarlet, and the true purple.” Early Christian theologians even attempted scattered theories of color: Tertullian, Origen, St. Basil, St. Cyril of Jerusalem, and many others.1
The Christian world, moreover, was cloaked in color. The biblical manuscripts of the Middle Ages glowed with reds and blues and greens. Scholars call them illuminated manuscripts. The paintings of the Renaissance, stained glasswork and mosaics, woven tapestries and vestments, woodwork and statues, frescoes embedded in church walls ― this was all explicitly Christian handiwork. And it all exploded with color.
When it came to color, in Christianity’s earliest years, the presiding clergy wore what everyone else wore. The style was dark ― grays, blacks, browns. In the Middle Ages, when the world became institutionally Christian, vibrant colors began to be used for vestments. Churches, too ― altar cloths and drapes ― were dressed in color.
There was no standardization at first. Bright colors appeared for feasts of celebration, dark colors for days of mourning. At Easter, depending on your location, you might see white, or you might see shimmering gold. On Good Friday, the church might be black, or scarlet, or deep purple. You might find it different the very next year.2
The first reference to standardized liturgical colors is found within a church associated with a military unit, and it did not appear until the twelfth-century. Indeed, it was the crusaders in Jerusalem who finally legislated specific colors to specific feasts ― white for Easter, red for Good Friday, and so on. In the next century, Pope Innocent III universalized their system across the Church.3
For the most part, the crusaders’ system still holds. Green for the Church’s Ordinary Time, the time of its steady advance and growth. Green for its “summertime.” Violet for Advent, the color of sobriety. Violet for Lent, the color of penance. White for Easter and for Christmas. White is the color of light. White is for Mary’s feasts. White for Joseph. White for the saints. Red for Good Friday. Red is the color of Jesus’s blood. Red for a martyr. Red for the Holy Spirit, and the Spirit’s fire. Red, also, to bury a pope. There is rose, too, which looks like pink. Pink is the color of hope, of springtime, of the rising sun. It is expectation. The Church wears rose just once near the end of Advent and then again near the end of Lent.
The Church manifests its full band of colors precisely because life itself offers a full band of colors. There are moments of brightness and moments of shade. There are moments of sheer joy. There are moments of expectation and hope. But there are also seasons of penance or seasons of regret. There are seasons of sorrow, pain, and true unhappiness. This is precisely what the liturgy recognizes, in all its colors. At your baptism, the priest wore white ― the color of light and joy. At your death, he’ll wear violet ― the color of mourning.
The Church’s liturgical colors glow in the stories of our own lives. But they are also lights from another world. Red and violet and green and pink. Sacrifice and hope and mourning and struggle. This is the story of our life. It’s the story of Jesus’s life. It’s the story the Church places before us with each color in each season and on each day.
See A. Hermann and M.C. di Azevedo, “Farbe,” RAC 7 (1969), 416.
See T.J. Talley, Encyclopedia of Religion, vol. 3, 2nd ed. (2005), s.v. “Christian Liturgical Year,” 1744.
See M. McCance, New Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 8, 2nd ed. (2003), s.v. “Liturgical Colors,” 645.