Black is Back

 Sacerdos in Aternum @SacerdosMariae:

Today, November 2, I will celebrate Holy Mass with a black chasuble.

A color that for centuries accompanied the Church's prayer for its deceased and which today we scarcely see in our parishes.

Its disappearance deserves reflection. 🧵

1️⃣ The Second Vatican Council never prohibited black chasubles.

The General Instruction of the Roman Missal (n. 346) still permits their use in Masses for the dead, where it is customary.

It is not a traditionalist extravagance. It is a legitimate option in the current liturgy.

2️⃣ In the post-conciliar period, many black chasubles were shoved aside, discarded, or simply forgotten.

In some places, a liturgical heritage of enormous value was destroyed for being considered outdated or incompatible with conciliar renewal.

What a mistake!

3️⃣ The idea spread that black represented a sad, gloomy, and pessimistic view of death, incompatible with Christian hope.

But the Church had used it for centuries without ever ceasing to proclaim the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

4️⃣ Black is the color of mourning. And Christians are also in mourning when we lose a loved one.

Jesus wept at Lazarus's tomb, even though he knew he would raise him.

Was his weeping contrary to hope?

5️⃣ Christian faith does not require us to conceal pain or pretend that death is unimportant.

Death is the consequence of sin and the last enemy to be destroyed, as St. Paul teaches.

Precisely for that reason, we need the victory of the risen Christ.

6️⃣ The black chasuble also expresses the gravity of our prayer for the deceased.

The Church does not automatically canonize those who die. It commends them to divine mercy and offers suffrages for them.

The Mass for the dead is, above all, a prayer of intercession.

7️⃣ Purple is also legitimate and has its own meaning.

But we do not need to reduce the full symbolic richness of the liturgy to a single color.

Purple especially highlights penance; black expresses grief and our mortal condition.

Both have their place.

8️⃣ Nor is there a contradiction between black and paschal hope.

The Christian can weep because he loves and hope because he believes.

Hope does not consist in denying the reality of death, but in knowing that Christ has conquered it.

One does not exclude the other.

9️⃣ It saddens me to think of so many ancient chasubles that ended up abandoned or destroyed.

Many were authentic works of art, crafted with care and offered for divine worship.

Liturgical renewal should never be confused with contempt for what has been received.

🔟 I do not argue that everyone must use black, nor that celebrating in purple is done worse.

I defend something much simpler: that we not despise a legitimate tradition of the Church or lose, through prejudice, the richness of its signs.

Today I will wear a black chasuble and proclaim the resurrection of Christ.

I will pray for the deceased, for their purification, and for their eternal rest.

Because black does not mean despair. It means that we take death, judgment, mercy, and eternal life seriously.

And because the light of Easter does not need us to eliminate mourning in order to keep shining.

The Church knows how to weep for its dead because it loves them. And it knows how to pray for them because it believes in eternal life.

#FielesDifuntos #Liturgia #CasullaNegra #2DeNoviembre