Silver and Black: a Meditation

Certainly one of the most tragic losses inflicted by the Council and its implementers was the disappearance of the liturgical “black” vestments for the requiem mass, Good Friday etc. This color however happily survives in the ‘Gregorian” (Traditional) Mass. We say “black” in quotation marks because such vestments, in my experience, are always worked with silver, producing a most wondrous effect, as in these images. Twice in the last few weeks due to tragic circumstances the Catholic community in Fairfield county has had a chance to experience the Solemn Requiem mass.

The erudite Prof. Arkady P. Nebolsine has written perceptively and poetically about the inner meaning of these colors in his “O Serebre” (On Silver)(Christianskoe Izdatelstvo, 1995 -only in Russian). Speaking of the intimate connection between black and silver:

“If gold is more like the sun and its blazing heat, then silver resembles more the moon and her cold nocturnal light. The radiance (of silver) should penetrate the darkness like the light of the stars and moon, while leaving unbroken the silence of the nocturne-Nachtstuecke -the music of silence reserved only to her.

(Silver)expresses the the poetry of the night, founded upon mystical experience ( the “Dark night of the soul” of St. John of the Cross…the “Hymns to the Night’ of Novalis…)..In connection with black drapery or the bier, silver is associated with the Requiem. It is, however, not redolent of annihilation. Rather, the night is transfixed and transfigured by its own light – like Death, transfigured by the Resurrection.” ( 5-6, my translation)