Depending on where you live in the world, January can be a dull month.
In northern parts of the world, January is full of white snow and temperatures drop below zero.
In other locations, January remains a month where everything is brown, still too early for any possibility of new growth.
It is at this time when the Church decides to wear green, a color that is in stark contrast to the natural world, during this stretch of Ordinary Time, a brief liturgical interlude between Christmas and Lent.
Color of hope and the coming spring
Green naturally awakens in us a sense of hope for the future. Writer John Walsh in The Mass and Vestments of the Catholic Church explains, "Green bespeaks hope. As pilgrims and soldiers we walk through a weary life, struggling as we walk, and we should not faint on the way because we are sustained by Our Lord, who in person hath visited us, and by the grace of His Holy Spirit, and, therefore, like the living branch whose life is renewed, we should journey with an indestructible hope toward our true country."
It is also a color that should remind us of Spring and how the world will soon awaken around us.
Nicholas Gihr in his book The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass brings to mind the images of a tree and garden to explain its symbolism:
Green is in harmony with the very nature of the Church—she is a mighty tree, which lifts its top majestically toward heaven, spreads its shady branches and leaves in benediction over the earth, resplendent with the richest blossoms, bringing forth choice fruits of grace and virtue u in abundance. She is the watered garden of the Lord; Christ, the good shepherd, leads his sheep to ever green pastures. The Church clothes herself in green vestments to express her joyous, lively hope of the ever lovely and eternally verdant meadows of the heavenly paradise, of the incorruptible inheritance and the unfading crown of glory in Heaven.
While green may not seem like the most obvious choice for a liturgical color during the month of January, it does help us look forward to the green that will surround us in the months to come.
