Simply BLUE-tiful


There are a lot of reasons I enjoy the color blue. For one, it reminds me of panda bears. Also, while everyone else was diggin' Michelangelo, I was rockin' blue bandanas for my fave Ninja Turtle Leonardo, the slicin' dicin' blue dude. I was a fan of pepsi blue. Blue was one of my High School's colors, as well as the Warriors' and the Chargers'.






Ah, but blue also is a color of Our Lady.


And tomorrow, interestingly enough, when the universal church celebrates the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, there will be some priests, via a special indult in certain Dioceses of Spain and Austria that will be allowed to wear blue vestments. (FYI, you might see blue vestments in some Dioceses here in the U.S., and although they may look cool, they are not licit for liturgical use)

Happy Catholic is inviting us Catholics, all 1 billion+ of us, to wear blue tomorrow. She quotes a youth group leader she heard: "There are over a billion Catholics in the world. If Catholics decided to wear the color blue tomorrow, everyone would be like...Blue is a cool color." So, dust off those "Catholic. Youth." shirts or your "LOL" shirts, or last year's LA Trip Shirts... and rock them proud tomorrow. As for me, If I had money (and a time machine), I would rock this shirt.

Hit the jump for more on Mary and the color blue... and an awkward picture of the Pope wearing a horrible interesting looking blue chasible while in Austria [Hey... he's the supreme pontiff of the universe, he can do that]





Ok, put those ugly vestments out of your mind for a second, and read this interesting description of why the color blue is attributed to Mary:



You may be interested to know that the great English poet and Jesuit priest, Gerard Manley Hopkins, wrote a poem entitled "The Blessed Virgin Compared to The Air That We Breathe". One section of this poem compares the air's blueness to the Virgin's transparent acceptance of God's will: Blue be it. This blue heaven -- the seven, or seven times seven, hued sunbeam shall transmit per fect, not alter it. So God was God of old. A Mother came to mould .... Perhaps Hopkins was latching onto something theologically revealing by comparing Mary to the color blue.

You see, color psychologists will tell you that of red, blue, yellow and green, blue is the one hue that is both "heteronomous" (passive and allowing of others to perform an action) and "concentric" (looking inward). Mary's response to the ... angel when it was announced that she was to bear the Divine Lord was heteronomous: "let it be done to me according to thy Word". Her nature was concentric, too. She found meaning not so much from going out of herself to receive the Lord (then she would wear yellow) but from humbling her own soul: "My soul magnifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my savior!" -- Jim Wick, via colormatters.com