Liturgical Color for Holy Saturday?

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phj5001

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Hello,

I’m looking to see what the appropriate liturgical color is for morning and evening prayer on Holy Saturday. The color for the vigil is, of course, white, but I don’t know if the same is true for the Hours.

What are your thoughts?
 
I think the colour is violet or purple.

The General Instruction of the Roman Missal has in n. 346:

“d. Violet or purple is used in Advent and Lent. It may also be worn in Offices and Masses or the Dead.”

For Good Friday the colour is red. No colour is given for Holy Saturday.

The General Instruction of the Liturgy of the Hours has:

“255. The priest or deacon who presides at a celebration may wear a stole over the alb or surplice; a priest may also wear a cope. On a greater solemnity there is nothing to prevent several priests from wearing copes or several deacons from wearing dalmatics.”

So a colour is required. While strictly speaking it is the season of Triduum, not the season of Lent, the colour of Lent seems most appropriate.
 
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Not much use is made of altar hangings, vestments, etc. that require something to be of liturgical colour on Good Friday and Holy Saturday. However, where they are used the following colours are correct. On Good Friday: Violet (or purple) except for the Solemn Liturgy of the Lord’s Passion at which red is used. On Holy Saturday: prior to the Paschal Vigil violet (or purple) is used; from, and including the paschal Vigil, white (or gold) is used.
 
I noticed this in the Ordo a few years back, that Holy Saturday is the 3rd “season”, after Advent and Lent, where purple/violet is designated.

Having said that, I see that I am contradicted by TomH1, so I’ll defer to him if he can provide sources.
 
The abbey I’m associated with doesn’t specify a liturgical colour for Holy Saturday. It does for Good Friday (red) and Holy Thursday (white).

Likely because there is no Mass on Holy Saturday, and the monks would simply be in choir in their black habits, with the abbot wearing his pectoral cross.

All Offices during the Triduum, except for the Easter Vigil itself, are in the monastic tradition stripped bare (this was the case in the pre-Conciliar Roman Office as wells and is one time when the Roman and Monastic Offices were the same). There is no hymn. The monks cross themselves at the incipit of the first antiphon. No doxology at the end of the psalms, and no closing verse/ritual; the responsory is replaced by the gradual “Christus factus est”. So no vestments either other than their black habits, to go with the sombre mood.

The LOTH has chosen not to carry forth this tradition alas, probably because the Offices are already very short to begin with. Still, it would strike as fitting to signal this uniquely and intensely barren day by keeping clerical garb as simple as possible.

Edit: I checked the ordo of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops and it specifies violet for the Liturgy of the Hours. But that does not apply to the monks who have their own ordo based on that of Solesmes.
 
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🙃 Sorry missed that you said Friday when you described it varying through the day.
 
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