“So what’s with the pink candle?” Years ago visitors to our home, seeing our Advent wreath, wondered if we had run out of purple candles. Tongue-in-cheek Christian humorists imagine non-liturgical folks attending church in Advent and contemplating whether the congregation is so poor that they simply can’t afford another purple candle. The actual explanation and the larger history of Advent observance is as murky and as convoluted as any aspect of Christian worship can be.
While the making and gradual lighting of Advent wreaths is a tradition no more than a few hundred years old, the observance of Advent may date to the fourth century. A canon of the Council of Saragossa (380 AD) requires the faithful not to be absent from worship for three weeks from December 17 until the Epiphany (January 6). The first clear reference to the observance appears in the sixth century when the Council of Tours in 567 required monks to fast every day in December until Christmas.
Thus the roots of Advent lie in a penitential practice of abstinence in preparation for a feast day. That sense of somber self-denial while reflecting on and repenting of one’s sins probably drove the adoption of purple as the color for the Advent season. Although a more recent innovation in some Anglican and Lutheran churches has been to replace the more sedate purple with a brighter blue color. Blue is said to be a color of hope and the use of blue in Advent is supposed to stem from medieval practice in Salisbury Cathedral.
Which all still leaves us wondering about that odd-man-out pink candle. To start with, the color is, more properly, “rose.” It arises out of the practice of a celebratory Sunday of joy in the midst of the church’s longer times of fasting and penitence. Beginning with the fourth Sunday in Lent, Laetare Sunday from the opening words of the day’s Scripture, “Rejoice (laetare), Jerusalem!” The clergy changed from purple to rose colored vestments. The pope may have also given a rose to bishops and priests as a further symbol of joy. That joyful “break” in the Lenten fast was carried over to the Advent fast on its third Sunday and eventually became symbolized in a rose-colored candle. In Latin this third Sunday was named by another word for joy, gaudete, “Gaudy Sunday” in popular English usage. So here we are lighting a pink candle and thinking about joy this Sunday.
And, though the Gospel reading contains John the Baptist’s dire call for repentance and warnings of the consequences for the unrepentant, the other texts all speak of rejoicing and joy. Our text continues to be the epistle lesson for the week, Philippians 4:4-7 this time. Paul was able to write verse 4 even as he sat imprisoned, “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, ‘Rejoice.'”
So both our text and the very situation of this rose-colored Sunday in the larger scheme of Advent invite us to learn to rejoice in the midst of hard times. Indeed Paul goes on in chapter 4 of Philippians to say in verses 10 to 13 that he’s learned to be content in all circumstances, that he can still “rejoice in the Lord greatly” just at the concern shown him by the Philippians. Maybe it’s time for us to don some rose-colored glasses and find our own joy in the Lord. Or maybe it’s time to show some concern for those who may be finding it hard to rejoice. Either way, it’s a time for joy.