Apostles, who are considered emissaries of the church, and who are tasked with church planting (that is, the foundation of new churches) hold a special commission in the ranks of the clergy.
And you may have noticed them; with their customarily red Apostle attire, it is as easy to spot an Apostle as it is to spot a bishop in purple or the Pope in white.
But why do Apostles traditionally wear red vestments? You may have heard that red is worn to commemorate the Pentecost, the Passion of Christ, or even worn in recognition of the martyred saints on their feast days.
But why Apostles? Let’s take a closer look at this.
The Tongues of Fire…
The reason that Apostle attire is traditionally red actually is the same reason that liturgical vestments reserved for the Pentecost are also red.
In the Acts of the Apostles, book 2, the Biblical Apostles had gathered “all with one accord in one place.” They had come together to observe Pentecost, an important Jewish feast that observes and celebrates God’s provision for the people of Israel.
Suddenly, a wind came upon them out of heaven and rattled the house in which they had gathered, “there appeared unto them like cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost” (Acts 2:3-4).
First, it is critical to observe that this bears a corollary to Matthew 18:19-20, in which Jesus states “where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.”
The Apostles had not simply gathered in a “house” as the scripture indicates. They had formed there together a church, in the traditional nature of the classic Apostle, which is doubtless the reason that the title Apostle is still applied to those that plant new churches.
But the tongues of fire, notwithstanding the fact that the scripture overtly states they were of the Holy Ghost, are rife with symbolic allusion to God’s previous appearances in the Bible, in the form of the Burning Bush that spoke to Moses or the Pillar of Fire that led Israel in the wilderness.
Though this passage in the Acts of the Apostles is highly disputed – and we will not attempt an overt dissertation – one thing is nearly certain. The tongues of fire indicate the presence of God, and the Apostles channeled a divine miracle in the passage.
This symbolic remembrance of the tongues of fire in the Acts of the Apostles is the chief reason that Apostle attire nowadays is classically colored red.
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