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Hallo again to all. The colour purple* is traditionally used in churches during the season of Advent, representing the coming kingdom of Christ. Purple, a royal colour, was costly to produce and rare. Purple seemed a natural pairing of colour and concept. But Advent, despite its emphasis on the parousia and the Four Last Things, isn't usually treated as a sort of stand-alone liturgical season as much as it perhaps should be. It's inextricably linked to Christmastide, to Our Lord's incarnation. If we were writing the Anglican Liturgical Colouring Book, we'd be inclined to assign incarnadine as the seasonal colour of Advent. Incarnadine is a sort of crimson colour, like blood. On the basis of its etymology alone — caro being Latin for flesh — it seems right as a visible herald of the incarnation. We're firmly of the persuasion that Advent in not a penitential season, but a solemn meditative one. As such, we see a value in holding in mind the astounding concept of incarnation throughout Advent — in addition to grand but somewhat remote themes of Death, Judgement, Heaven, and Hell. Incarnadine, the word, the colour, for us holds the tension of Advent: the waiting, the watching, the anticipation of a birth, the foreknowledge of a death. Incarnadine signifies both the blood of birth and death and heralds not only Our Lord's nativity but His Good Friday as well. If Christmastide ought to be the time to celebrate the fulness of the incarnation, that blessed season seems far too short and far too rightly merry to encompass all the facets of incarnation. If we can't help borrowing some of Advent's Kingdom to anticipate Bethlehem's manger (What are the O Antiphons but an extended and beautiful count-down?), perhaps we could blur the mysterious royal purple of Advent into a crimson magenta incarnadine as the days grow nearer to that wondrous birth. And if there is an Advent flower, surely it should be the spicy deep clove-scented carnation...
See you next week.
Last
updated: 11 December 2005 |
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