Monday 6th Week of Ordinary Time

Liturgical colour: white

White is the colour of heaven. At Mass,
it is used to celebrate feasts of the Lord; Christmas and Easter, the great seasons of the Lord; and the saints. Sometimes one will see gold to portray the splendor of God.

In the earliest centuries all vestments were white – the white of baptismal purity and of the robes worn by the armies of the redeemed in the Apocalypse, washed white in the blood of the Lamb. As the persecutions ended at the Edict of Milan in 313AD, the Church began to use colour so that our sense of sight could deepen our experience of the mysteries of salvation, just as incense recruits our sense of smell and music that of hearing. Over the centuries various schemes of colour for feasts and seasons were worked out, and it is only as late as the 19th century that they were harmonized into their present form.