Go Ahead. Color me purple, the Advent color, like “the purple mountain majesty” of Katherine Lee Bates in her “America.” If black is the absence of light, purple is its promise. Somehow as the light begins fading into night, the blue darkening to black reminds me of tomorrow’s light, bright and warm. Painters– artists, I mean — deal with hues and shades and the secrets of color which the rest of us usually miss. Like painters,we can begin to notice when day light slowly reveals purple sky.
We should take note, when the first purple candle of Advent is lit and the priest’s vestments and the church banners stun us with a kind of somberness, especially after last Sunday’s rich, glorious celebration of the feast of Christ the King.”
When the bible recounts an appearance of the Lord, He appears as a bright light. “The light shone in the darkness and the darkness did not comprehend it.”
The bright light was testimony of His presence. The Hebrews had a word for that light, “Shekinah” which means a glorious light, like when the sun shines brilliantly. In fact, the Holy of Holies shielded this glory of God from the people. That glory which they could not see they called the “dwelling place” or simply, “the presence.”
Somewhere St. Augustine answers the question of why God shields himself from us. Or, better, why we shield ourselves from God.
He tells us that we can’t look at the face of the sun without experiencing a painful momentary blindness. Instinctively, we know that we must protect our eyes, that directly trying to see the sun is impossible. It blinds us. If we can’t even see the face of the sun because of its brightness, how can we expect to look on the Being Who is Light itself?
The first Sunday of Advent reminds us that the world was in darkness until the messiah came. Then, slowly it dawned upon us that He was the light which was to come into the world.”
So, lets walk through the purple shade of Advent as we prepare for that day when as in Bethlehem we will experience “in that dark street shining the everlasting light.”