3rd Sunday of Advent

Twice a year, once during Lent and once during Advent, we wear these vestments and people routinely call them “pink.” Must to remind: it’s not pink!
The color, in fact, is called “rose.” It’s a subtle difference, but it has a more subdued shade than pink. Liturgists will tell you it signifies rejoicing and signals a spirit of joyful hope during Lent and now, during Advent.
I did some Googling and found something, what I think, puts Advent, and this particular Sunday, into a beautiful context.
This comes from Brother Hyacinth Cordell, a Dominican, who noted that “the dark color of violet in Advent harmonizes well with the lessening sunlight late in the year.” It also points to royalty, and Christ as our King.
But what about rose? Br. Cordell described it this way: “Rose,” he wrote, “is a softening of violet. It is violet approaching white. In this sense, it anticipates the pure white of the Birth and Resurrection of Christ.”
Rose: a color that foreshadows the miracle of God’s incarnation, the purity of Emmanuel.
Rose: a symbol of eternal love—the kind of love that would bring into the world, in the humblest of places, and the most unlikely of times, the Son of God.
The reading from Isaiah this Sunday speaks of a flowering in the desert:
“The desert and the parched land will exult;
the steppe will rejoice and bloom.
They will bloom with abundant flowers,
and rejoice with joyful song.”
The gospel, too, points to a kind of flowering in the desert—a flowering of prophetic hope in John the Baptist.
For us today, the color rose is a sign of life in a place that is parched—the desert of human existence, our human existence, the very place Christ came to redeem.
Here and now, the solemnity of Advent gives way to joy. Light breaks through. Everything in this sacred space suddenly bears the color and the promise of new life.
This is what we cling to, and hope for, in the final days of Advent.
The words of a great 15th century carol say it better than I can—reminding us that the color we wear today points to a promise about to be fulfilled.
Lo, how a Rose e’er blooming from tender stem hath sprung!
Of Jesse’s lineage coming, as men of old have sung.
This Flower, whose fragrance tender with sweetness fills the air,
Dispels with glorious splendor the darkness everywhere…