Why do you do that - Colours

A number of people ask about our vestments and the colours of them, so here are a few thoughts.

However I preface them with two cautions:

1. It doesn’t really matter that much, but if you’re going to do it, you may as well do it consistently and correctly.

2. Whole libraries have been written about this, and it’s only a short Facebook post, so it doesn’t contain all the world of scholarship.

Initially, try and think of a liveried servant in a country house in the old days, or an army regiment now, or a busy operating theatre. Everyone wears clothes that show what they do and it stops confusion. In the same way, it makes the wearer less ‘them’ and more ‘the job’ while they wear the uniform. That’s a pretty good theological précis - everyone at the altar is a servant of God first and themselves second. Broadly speaking, a uniform takes away your identity and makes you part of a process. For clergy, it makes us liveried servants of God, serving Him on behalf of all of us - and everyone else is joined in worship with them, equally and as part of the Body of Christ. But there are specific things that we all do.

With me so far?

Then there are the colours. The actual vestments we will leave for another post. Much like pub signs show you the name of the pub, the colour of vestments (and the altar cloth etc) show you what the day is about.

Red for Martyrs, because of the blood.

Purple for Lent and Advent because it’s the colour of yearning, of the light breaking through just before the dawn.

Rose pink for two days a year, the Sundays almost at the end of Lent and Advent, when the joy of the coming feast of Christmas or Easter breaks out a little.

Green for most of the year ‘Ordinary Time’, for us to grow and flourish.

Black for funerals because black is the traditional colour of mourning and also, in a colour chart way, the absence of colour.

White or gold for feast days, because gold is a colour associated with celebrations.

Once we have all digested this, next week we will look at the specific clothes (vestments) worn for particular purposes.