To the Band of Brothers: December 11, 2020
Good morning,
This coming Sunday will be the third Sunday of Advent and the Church will celebrate what is called Gaudete Sunday. The name comes from the Latin for “rejoice” and refers to the opening antiphon at Mass where worshippers will be encouraged to “rejoice in the Lord always; and again, I say rejoice'' (Philippians 4:4-6). Since we are approaching the halfway point of the Advent season and Christmas is right around the corner, Christians need to start getting excited about the birth of our Lord and Savior.
It’s a beautiful idea, but I have one slight problem with it. After two weeks of wearing purple vestments at mass, Gaudete Sunday calls for the priest to wear pink. You read correctly, pink! They actually refer to the liturgical color as “rose,” but as Shakespeare once said, “a rose by any other name is still pink!"
Supposedly pink (or rose) is the color of rejoicing. Personally, I think rose is the color of my sister’s lip-gloss or my niece’s bedroom walls, but not the color of rejoicing. When I wear pink (or rose) vestments, I don’t feel like rejoicing. What I felt like is a big bottle of Pepto-Bismol.
So, because I am sure I am not the only priest who feels this way about the color pink (or rose), I thought I would help the Church by thinking of another color that can be used for rejoicing.
My first choice is orange. This is a nice color. If I’m not mistaken, it is the result of mixing red and yellow. Maybe there is something profoundly theological about that. When I think of the color orange I think of my favorite Gatorade flavor and also my favorite Jell-O. I also think of juice and how every morning I take a big swig of it in order to get the necessary Vitamin C into my system to battle germs.
The color also makes me think of the Orange Bowl and how sad I am it is no longer there. I then think of the Miami Dolphins and how on Gaudete Sunday they will have to face Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs. I then think, maybe I will not be rejoicing at all on Sunday night and my week will be filled with sorrow. All this makes me very sad and I realize if I wore orange vestments at mass I wouldn’t rejoice at all.
So, maybe the color should be blue. Of course, blue! I love blue cheese and how happy eating a wedge salad with lots of blue cheese dressing makes me feel. Blue is also one of the colors of Belen and I always associate that color to our beautiful alma mater and it also makes me happy. But, then I think of all those songs my dad loved listening to by a guy named Bobby Vinton. Songs like Blue Velvet and I’m Mr. Blue. My father would play them in his car when he drove me to school in the mornings. They were very sad ballads about losing your first girlfriend or not being with the girl you loved.
I then realize blue is also the color of those paper test booklets used in college for final exams. I remember how much I had to study and rack my brain preparing for those eternally long essay questions. I remember the all-nighters and gallons of Cuban coffee my friends and I drank in order to stay awake as we prepared to face the infamous “blue books.” Forget it, I don’t think that wearing blue vestments would cause me to rejoice at all.
How about yellow? Yellow is a happy color. It’s vibrant, flashy, and definitely exciting. There has to be a reason why the Vatican chose it as one of the colors for its flag. Yellow is the symbol of hope and is linked to the Resurrection. Yes, I think yellow may be the right choice and worth running the risk of people getting Easter and Christmas mixed up.
Then again, when I think of yellow I think of that old Disney movie about the dog, Old Yeller. He gets rabies while trying to defend his owners from a ferocious wolf. The whole movie focuses on having the viewer understand there is a real loving relationship between this dog and his young owner, but then he has to shoot Old Yeller because he’s infected.
Wow, I remember I cried for weeks when I saw that movie and kept sobbing the name of poor Yeller over and over again, even in my sleep. I swore never to see another Disney movie again unless I was assured that no animals were hurt in the shooting of the film. You know, on second thought, maybe it’s better to keep yellow for the spring when you have no choice but to be happy.
I’ve run out of colors. Purple, green, red, and white are already used liturgically. I can't really suggest any of them. So, maybe pink (or rose) is the right color. Maybe I can get used to it. I mean, it’s only one day of the year and, besides that, my mother says I look pretty in pink (or handsome in rose).
Auspice Maria
BELEN JESUIT PREPARATORY SCHOOL
500 SW 127th Avenue, Miami, FL 33184
phone: 305.223.8600 | fax: 305.227.2565 | email: communications@belenjesuit.org
500 SW 127th Avenue, Miami, FL 33184
phone: 305.223.8600 | fax: 305.227.2565 | email: communications@belenjesuit.org
Belen Jesuit Preparatory School was founded in 1854 in Havana, Cuba, by Queen Isabel II of Spain. The task of educating students was assigned to the priests and brothers of the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits), whose teaching tradition is synonymous with academic excellence and spiritual discipline. In 1961, the new political regime of Cuba confiscated the school's property and expelled the Jesuit faculty. The School was re-established in Miami the same year, and over the next decade, continued to grow. Today, Belen Jesuit is situated on a 34-acre site in western Dade County, just minutes away from downtown Miami.