“A rose by any other name would smell as sweet,” so sayeth William Shakespeare in his play, “Romeo and Juliet." The liturgical color for the third Sunday of Advent is technically “rose,” but what exactly is the color “rose,” what does it mean, and why can’t we just call it “pink”? I decided to study this super-important-for-our-faith issue a couple years ago and share my findings here. The liturgical colors are very old and traditions go way back, but they were officially codified in 1570 to be like they are now. I won’t go into all the other colors, but the color “rose” is used optionally on two days only—the Third Sunday of Advent and the Fourth Sunday of Lent.
The Church specifies the color in our mother tongue of Latin to be “roseus” which is the same word in Latin for the flower, so just like our English-cognate word “rose”. Apparently, “rose” is an extremely ancient word and goes back several millennia, beyond Latin to earlier Greek and even earlier Old Persian. In contrast, the English word “pink” seems to be a pretty modern word only a few hundred years old and comes also from a flower of the same name. Sometimes in English, since we might think “rose” and “pink” are the same thing, we might say the liturgical color is pink, but I think that is a mistake as we will see as we go deeper down this rose-shaded rabbit hole.
The color “rose” like the word is complex and deep. Roses come naturally in a variety of colors. Since we get our marching orders out of Rome, we look to what native roses look like in that area in antiquity. I believe that flower would be the “Rosa Gallica” or “French Rose” which was grown in ancient Rome. According to wikipedia its color is “deep pink” but the American Rose Society webpage says they come in hues from “palest blush through various pinks, lavenders, mauves to deep purples.” There is complexity and variety in the color rose. The color is typically defined by color experts to be a mix of other colors, usually some violet and red along with maybe a bit of yellow and white. I’d contrast this again with the color pink. Pink is usually defined as a tint of red, or simple red mixed with white. The color pink lacks the complexity of rose.
Why does this matter at all? This rare liturgical color of rose is linked to joy. On this Sunday, we are supposed to rejoice that Christ is near. Rose then represents joy, a lighter shade than the rest of the more subdued violet Advent. Joy, like the color rose, is ancient, complex, and deep. Joy is a deeply-rooted gift from our eternal God that results from knowing we possess God’s love and even Jesus Himself. Yet, as we all know, we often in our lives try to substitute a sort of cheap fun or modern entertainment to fill that part of our heart. Sorry to knock pink, but it just doesn’t go as deep as rose, just like our tendency to fill our hearts with junk when we really want God’s love, joy, and peace. We go for pink when we really want rose.
I dare to think in this case Shakespeare is wrong and we can’t rename “rose” lest we lose the deep reality underneath it. Let’s stand strong in the color “rose” for joy! Don’t lose your joy! No one can take Christ and His love from us, therefore no one can steal our joy unless we let them. Let’s be a rose-people of deep, lasting, real joy. Our world needs the real thing and only Jesus can give it.