Our Lenten colors speak of royalty and sorrow

By Patricia Kasten
Compass Associate Editor

Purple passion.

That may sound like some sort of tropical drink, but instead it refers to the colors of Lent.

The main liturgical color for the season of Lent is purple. However, there are many shades of purple - as we know from having recently seen purple used in church during Advent. But Advent uses a different shade for its proper liturgical color, more blue in tone. The purple of Lent is more red-toned. (Purple, after all, is a combination of red and blue.)

	L e n t

In the Middle Ages, when the use of liturgical colors first developed, purple was the color of kings. It had been so since the time of imperial Rome, when only the emperor wore purple. The dye used to make this "Tyrian purple" was rare, coming from a certain type of mollusk (harvested only in the city of Tyre along the Mediterranean Sea) - and quite expensive. So only royalty - those "born to the purple" - could afford it.

Purple was also, for heraldic purposes (which was very popular in the Middle Ages), considered to have the same hue value as grey or black. Gray (think sackcloth and ashes) and black (mourning) were colors of penance and sorrow. So the color purple - connoting a pairing of both penance and royalty - was a natural to choose for the Lenten season, when we prayerfully honor the Paschal Mystery of Christ.

The U.S. Bishops' Committee on the Liturgy has said that the red-toned purple of Lent, correctly termed "Roman purple," serves to remind us both of Christ's kingship and of his blood. Interestingly, the purple worn by bishops and archbishops (called "amaranth red") blends red-purple and scarlet, and reminds us of the bishops' charge to protect their flocks "even to the shedding of their own blood" as Christ did.

During this time we only see the color red in church on Palm Sunday of the Lord's Passion and Good Friday (at other times, it is used for feasts of martyrs and the Holy Spirit), the purple of Lent draws us unrelentingly toward that red. This is because Lent draws us inexorably to the Cross, and the blood shed there.

"There is a baptism with which I must be baptized," the Lord said of his coming passion and death (Lk 12:50, read on Wednesday of the second week of Lent). The reds of the Passion and Good Friday symbolize the baptism which the Lord underwent in his own blood, and by which we were redeemed and the church received birth. Blood and water flowed from Christ's side in death and "by his wounds you have been healed" (1Pet 2:24).

Like statues veiled under purple - as some churches will have during the last days of Lent -- our lives are veiled and shrouded by sin. On Good Friday, as a red veil of the Lord's passion is slowly taken away from the cross, it symbolizes our Lenten faith that our sins will also be lifted away to reveal us standing close beside Christ in Easter joy.

(Sources: The Church Visible; the U.S. Bishops Committee on the Liturgy; Principles of Liturgy; The Modern Catholic Encyclopedia; The Harper Collins Encyclopedia of Catholicism; and The Catholic Encyclopedia.)