The colors change with the Church calendar, marking different feasts, fasts, and seasons throughout the year. It’s a visual way of entering into the mood and meaning of what we’re celebrating or preparing for.
If you’ve visited St. Michael’s on a few different Sundays, you’ve probably noticed this. One week Father’s wearing gold. Next month it’s blue. During Lent, purple or dark red. These aren’t random choices or personal preferences. They follow a pattern that connects us to the liturgical rhythm of the Church year.
What the Colors Mean
Gold shows up most often. We wear it for the great feasts of Christ, Nativity, Theophany, Transfiguration, Pascha. It’s the color of divine light, resurrection, glory. When you see gold vestments, you know we’re celebrating something about our Lord himself.
Blue is for the Theotokos. Every feast of the Virgin Mary gets blue, her Nativity, her Presentation in the Temple, the Dormition. We also use blue during the Dormition Fast in August and for the Akathist service. It’s the color of heaven, of purity, of the one who contained the Uncontainable.
Red marks martyrdom and the Cross. We wear it for the Elevation of the Holy Cross in September, for Saints Peter and Paul, for the Beheading of St. John the Forerunner. Red also appears during the Nativity Fast and on Great and Holy Thursday morning. It’s blood, sacrifice, the fire of the Holy Spirit.
Purple comes out during Holy Week, from Palm Sunday evening through Great Friday. It’s penitential, somber, preparing us for the weight of what’s coming.
White is for Pascha itself and the weeks following. Pure, bright, resurrection.
Green appears after Pentecost through much of the summer. Life, growth, the work of the Holy Spirit in the Church.
How We Do It in the Antiochian Tradition
The Antiochian Diocese actually publishes a specific calendar that tells priests exactly what color to wear on which dates. It’s more detailed than you might expect. We don’t just say “blue for Mary feasts” and leave it at that. The calendar specifies that blue runs from August 1st through the 5th during the Dormition Fast, then again from the 7th through the 12th, then the 14th, then the 15th through the 23rd. It accounts for the feast day itself and the days before and after.
Some periods are marked “optional”, times when the vestments should be neither particularly dark nor particularly bright. The priest (or in a monastery, the Protos) decides what fits. This happens in early September, in the fall between the major feasts, in late August. It’s a kind of liturgical ordinary time.
This level of specificity is pretty Antiochian. Other jurisdictions handle it differently. The Greeks tend to use more gold overall and might wear red for Pascha in some places. Russians have their own patterns. The OCA is close to our practice but doesn’t break it down by exact dates the same way. There’s no universal Orthodox rule book for vestment colors, which surprises people coming from backgrounds where everything’s standardized.
Why It Matters
You might think this is just aesthetics or tradition for tradition’s sake. But when you’ve been Orthodox for a while, you realize how much these colors teach you. You walk into church and see purple vestments, and before the service even starts, your heart knows we’re in a penitential season. You see blue and you’re already thinking about the Theotokos. Gold tells you it’s a feast day before you check the calendar.
It’s the Church using every tool she has, not just words, not just music, but color and fabric and beauty, to form us. To help us enter into the mystery we’re celebrating. When Father walks out in those red vestments for the Elevation of the Cross, you’re seeing the blood of Christ, the martyrs, the cost of our salvation. It’s theology you can see.
If you’re still getting used to all this, don’t worry about memorizing the system. Just notice. Pay attention when the colors change. Ask yourself what we’re celebrating. Over time it’ll become second nature, one more way the Church’s rhythm shapes your own.
