Anglican churches follow a liturgical calendar which is a pattern for worship throughout the year. This provides an ideal opportunity for school to mirror what is happening in our local parish and connects our school community with our local worshipping community, as well as with the wider national church. It also provides a colourful and visual way to mark the various Christian festivals throughout the year, as shown below:
St Helen and Katharine’s Chapel now has a set of new vestments in each liturgical colour. Changing the colour of the cloths on the altar (known as the burse and veil) and the stole (which is worn as a sign of priestly authority) will help everyone in the school community make links between the seasons and the festivals throughout the year:
- white for times of celebration;
- green for ordinary time, between the main festivals and seasons (this covers most of the year and can represent growth);
- purple for times of reflection and remembrance e.g. Lent and Advent; and
- red to either mark Saints’ days where it represents their death as a martyr, or to represent the flames of the Holy Spirit.
The vestments are almost always decorated in some way and you will hopefully come to notice that the common thread running through the school set is the Chi-Rho as seen above the Chapel door. This is a Christian symbol for “Christ” written by superimposing the two Greek letters “Chi (X)” and “Rho (P)” which are the first two letters in Greek of the name of “CHRist.”
