Some discussion of my eclectic vestment and parament practices, from another thread:
No, we have consecrated Deacons, they can and most do; as Elders, we are laymen and serve as liturgical deacons. We wear black roman style Cassocks, occasionally with Surplice. For Major Feasts and Festivals Pastor would wear a Chasuble and Maniple, we have a Tunicle; not yet put into service, for the Elder. The set we have would do for both "White" and "Red" Festivals.
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Following the Trail of Breadcrumbs for the Upcoming NRSV Revision – Catholic Bible Talk
That’s a beautiful set, I particularly love Roman chasubles, but if your parish would like any additional sets, I would be happy to donate from my collection.
In terms of liturgical color, I have a lot of options, and my own approach, which I do not recommend, by the way, as it is eclectic and would constitute a disruption of LCMS practice, so the following is purely informational, and to give you a sense of the scale of my vestment collection. I like to use red and gold set for Low Sunday, Pentecost and Reformation Sunday, and the feasts of the martyrs and Apostles, or a sarum blue or violet set for Advent, or a blue stole or complete set for the Commemoration of St. Mary and the Annunciation, or a rose set for Guadete and Laetere Sunday (these are not, as one might fear, effeminate in appearance, but on the contrary are extremely beautiful).
I am a traditionalist*, as you know, and so I use a crimson chasuble on Maundy Thursday, which I then replace with a crimson cope for the Tenebrae, and on Good Friday, and weekdays in Lent, including Ash Wednesday, I follow a hybrid Roman-Byzantine practice of a presanctified holy communion service using the very simple, classic text of St. Gregory the Great, which is used in the Eastern Orthodox and Greek Catholic churches on weekdays in Lent, and on Good Friday in the Roman Church until 1955, when Pope Pius XII ruined the whole Paschal Triduum by changing the wording and the vestment color from black to red, and the lectionary reading on Holy Saturday.
Suffice it to say, I use a black chasuble with purple lining for those services, although I have ordered a black Roman chasuble and Ambrosian-type copes in black and murello (a kind of purplish color, used in the Ambrosian Rite on weekends in Lent). I think black is ideal for funerals but unfortunately these days it tends to upset ... some people, so I haven’t tried; I am still working on persuading my flock to not get cremated and of the benefits of an Orthodox style burial using simple, extremely inexpensive wooden caskets. I have convinced a few people to buy some from St. Barbara Monastery, an OCA monastery in California.
*That said, I can be flexible about which tradition to follow. For example, I have West Syriac vestments, one of which is white and with blue trim and one of which is blue with red trim, and both gold brocade decorations depicting grape vines; these can be obtained from India and are incredibly inexpensive, yet of extremely high quality. I like to use these at Christmas. I also have Coptic vestments, which I rarely use in full, mainly for commemorating the feast of St. Mark the Evangelist, however, the Coptic alb is extremely nice and I commonly wear this with other vestments. And I have Byzantine sets. And of course, I only wear chasubles consistently with one of my two missions; with the other I use a stole during the Eucharist and a cassock, surplice and tippet during at other times. And I use this same arrangement for anything that is non-Eucharistic, unless it is extremely formal, like the Tenebrae Service or anything in Lent, and that warrants a cope. Sometimes, following Assyrian practice, I wear a cope and stole but no chasuble during the Eucharist, since a cope is very nearly a Phelonion or Phayno or Gothic Chasuble, and St. Paul asked for his Phelonion to be sent to him in one of his epistles, it is believed to be so as to keep him warm on the impending day of his martyrdom, which is why we wear the Phelonion or Chasuble, or Phayno, as it is called in Aramaic.
In my opinion, green vestments are overused in the Western Rite. In the UMC, between the 1920s and 1980s, red vestments and paraments were used for the first half of ordinary time after Pentecost, and then, halfway to Advent began the wonderful, now suppressed liturgical season of Kingdomtide, and that was when green vestments were used. I follow a similiar pattern, albeit using green vestments as the default in post-Pentecost, and gold vestments as the default in Kingdomtide, to suggest the fall foliage; due to a large number of events where red or blue vestments required, including the feasts of St. Peter and Paul, John the Baptist, the Holy Cross St. Luke, and Reformation Sunday on the red side (and on the blue side we have the Feast of St. Mary, and the Feast of St. Michael). I also use green on Palm Sunday, following Byzantine Rite Orthodox tradition and also an unusual but likable tradition at the parish where I grew up, presumably Byzantine-influenced.
