The priest's vestments change color with the Church's calendar. Each color is a signal: what season we are in, or what we celebrate today.
Ordinary Time
The color of living, growing things. Green carries the Church through Ordinary Time — the long stretch of the year for simply walking with Christ and growing in faith.
Advent and Lent
The color of waiting and repentance. Violet marks the two great seasons of preparation — Advent before Christmas, Lent before Easter — and may also be worn for the dead.
Gaudete and Laetare Sundays
Worn only twice a year — the Third Sunday of Advent and the Fourth Sunday of Lent — rose is violet lightened by joy: a reminder, mid-fast, that what we are waiting for is almost here.
Christmas, Easter, and feasts
The color of joy, purity, and resurrection glory. White clothes the Christmas and Easter seasons and the feasts of the Lord, of Mary, of the angels, and of saints who were not martyrs.
The most solemn celebrations
More festive than any color. On the greatest days of the year, gold — or the most precious vestments a parish has — may take the place of the color of the day.
Passion, Pentecost, and martyrs
The color of blood and fire. Red is worn on Palm Sunday and Good Friday for Christ's Passion, at Pentecost for the flame of the Holy Spirit, and on the feasts of apostles and martyrs — the saints who gave their lives. A red day often means a martyr is being remembered.
Masses for the dead
The traditional color of mourning. Black may still be worn at funerals and Masses for the dead, though violet or white are more common today.
