This is the right side out; the wrong side, according to Sister Emmerich, is dulness, and clinging to this world's goods.
"Grey, the emblem of repentance and sorrow, and at the same time the image of a lukewarm soul, is also, according to another interpretation, symbolical of the Resurrection--white, piercing through blackness--light entering into the Tomb and coming out as a new hue--grey, a mixed colour still heavy with the gloom of death, but reviving as it gets light by degrees from the whiteness of day.
"Green, to which the mystics gave favourable meanings, also acquires a disastrous sense in some cases; it then represents moral degradation and despair; it borrows melancholy significance from dead leaves, is the colour given to the bodies of the devils in Stephan Lochner's Last Judgment, and in the infernal scenes depicted in the glass windows and pictures of the earliest artists.
"Black and brown, with their inimical suggestions of death and hell, change their meaning as soon as the founders of religious Orders adopt them for the garb of the cloister.

Black then symbolizes renunciation, repentance, the mortification of the flesh, according to Durand de Mende; and brown and even grey suggest poverty and humility.
"Yellow again, so misprized in the formulas of symbolism, becomes significant of charity; and if we accept the teaching of the English monk who wrote in about 1220, yellow is enhanced when it changes to gold, rising to be the symbol of divine Love, the radiant allegory of eternal Wisdom.
"Violet, finally, when it appears as the distinctive colour of prelates, divests itself of its usual meaning of self-accusation and mourning, to assume a certain dignity and simulate a certain pomp.
"On the whole, I find only white and blue which never change." "In the Middle Ages, according to Yves de Chartres," said the Abbe Plomb, "blue took the place of violet in the vestments of bishops, to show them that they should give their minds rather to the things of Heaven than to the things of earth." "And how is it," asked Madame Bavoil, "that this colour, which is all innocence, all purity, the colour of Our Mother Herself, has disappeared from among the liturgical hues ?" "Blue was used in the Middle Ages for all the services to the Virgin, and it has only fallen into desuetude since the eighteenth century," replied the Abbe Plomb; "and that only in the Latin Church, for the orthodox Churches of the East still wear it." "And why this neglect ?" "I do not know, any more than I know why so many colours formerly used in our services have been forgotten.

Where are the colours of the ancient Paris use: saffron yellow, reserved for the festival of All Angels; salmon pink, sometimes worn instead of red; ashen grey, which took the place of violet; and bistre instead of black on certain days.
"Then there was a charming hue which still holds its place in the scale of colour used in the Roman ritual, though most of the Churches overlook it--the shade called 'old rose,' a medium between violet and crimson, between grief and joy, a sort of compromise, a diminished tone, which the Church adopted for the third Sunday in Advent and the fourth Sunday in Lent.

It thus gave promise, in the penitential season that was ending, of a beginning of gladness, for the festivals of Christmas and Easter were at hand.
"It was the idea of the spiritual dawn rising on the night of the soul, a special impression which violet, now used on those days, could not give." "Yes, it is to be regretted that blue and rose-colour have disappeared from the Churches of the West," said the Abbe Gevresin.

"But to return to the monastic dress which delivered brown, grey, and black from their melancholy significance, does it not strike you that from the point of view of emblematic language, that of the Order of the Annunciation was the most eloquent?
Those sisters were habited in grey, white, and red, the colours of the Passion, and they also wore a blue cape and a black veil in memory of Our Mother's mourning." "The image of a perpetual Holy Week!" exclaimed Durtal.
"Here is another question," the Abbe Plomb went on.