Why do you do that?!

The Color Red.

Or, why my favorite liturgical color is the least used.

For those who were paying attention you may have noticed that this past Sunday, Palm Sunday, the liturgical colors changed from the purple of Lent to the red of Holy Week. I personally love the red hangings, altar frontals and stoles. And as I was thinking about it this week it occurred to me, maybe one of the reasons I like it so much is that red is used less than any of the other liturgical colors. Purple is used for all of Advent and all of Lent, 9 weeks out of the year total. White is used during the 12 days of Christmas, all 7 weeks of Easter season and on other various feast days such as the Epiphany, Transfiguration, Holy Trinity, All Saints and Christ the King. Green is of course the most used color since it covers all of ordinary time, nearly 6 months of green! But red in its glorious humility is used only for Holy Week, Pentecost, ordinations, confirmations and the observance of a martyr's feast day.

Red is used of course on Pentecost and those other episcopal (meaning conducted by an episcopos - ie bishop) services like confirmation, as a symbol of the tongues of holy fire that came down and were visible on the heads of the apostles on that first Pentecost. But during Holy Week red takes on a whole different, and perhaps more obvious symbolic meaning. In some older priestly manuals they distinguished that a darker red, referred to as Ox Blood, should be used during Holy Week. This is of course to remind the worshipper of shed blood.

This week is, as gruesome as it may sound, a celebration of blood. The shed blood that is God's righteous requirement as punishment for sin. The blood of bulls and goats that the ancient Israelites were required to sacrifice to atone for their sins. The blood of the Passover Lamb that was shed to redeem the first born sons of Israel. And supremely the shed blood of our Lord Jesus Christ whose sacrifice upon the cross fulfilled all of these other, prefiguring sacrifices as he atoned once and for all for sin. And all of these we see expressed in the celebration of the Cup which is poured out for us in the institution of the Lord's Supper, the token of a new covenant sealed in His blood.

Red may just be the richest of our liturgical colors.