What are the guidelines for the use of liturgical colors?

Liturgical colors can orient us to the season of the church year and help to engage the sense of sight in worship. White and gold symbolize days and seasons of joy and mark pivotal events in the life of Christ. Red symbolizes the work of the Holy Spirit and the sacrifices of martyrs. Purple designates a season of penitence and preparation, such as Lent.

This was not always the case. For the first thousand years of the church’s history, little thought was given to liturgical color. White vestments were most common, with more elaborate garments and paraments reserved for important festivals. The 12th through 16th centuries brought localized experiments with liturgical color, but no standard practices prevailed until 1570, when the Roman Catholic Church established a normative sequence of colors to accompany the church calendar. Calvinists in the sixteenth century eschewed these rubrics, however, preferring black vestments. The past two centuries there has been a resurgence in the use of liturgical colors, propelled by a new appreciation for the aesthetic dimensions of worship.

Here is a typical schedule for the use of liturgical colors:

i.     Advent: purple

ii.    Christmas (12 days) to Epiphany (Jan. 6): White and gold

iii.   Ordinary Time (Jan. 7 through the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday): green,with the exception of Baptism of the Lord and Transfiguration of the Lord, both White

iv.   Ash Wednesday through the first five weeks of Lent: purple

v.    Palm / Passion Sunday: red

vi.   Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of Holy Week: purple

vii.  Maundy Thursday: purple(until the church is stripped bare)

viii. Good Friday: no color; church remains stripped bare

ix.   Easter Season (including Ascension of the Lord): white and gold

x.    Day of Pentecost: red

xi.   Ordinary Time (Monday after Pentecost through Saturday before the First Sunday of Advent): green, with the exception of Trinity Sunday, All Saints’ Day (or first Sunday in November),and Christ the King, all white

xii.  Additionally, white is used for funerals, baptisms, and weddings. Red is used for ordinations, installations and church dedications and anniversaries.