What do you wear to worship

seeking.IAM

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I dress for church in a suit and tie. A sport coat, dress slacks, and open collar button-down shirt is about as casual as I go.

I didn't always do that, but now I choose to as an act of personal piety to honor God. I dress for important meetings at work. In the unlikely event the President of the U.S. invites me for dinner, I'm not showing up in blue jeans. I should do less for the King of Kings? I fully agree that it is not required and God accepts us just as we are. But, this is my choice, nonetheless.

A funny story. When I was newly married, my wife's family tradition was that all the men went pheasant hunting after dinner. I felt honored to be invited along, but then I saw my wife's grandfather putting on a tie. I asked my wife, "I thought we were going hunting?" She said, "He always wears a tie hunting - to honor the bird."
 
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The Liturgist

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For the divine office if there is no sacramental service, a cassock, surplice and tippet, or a cassock with Continental-style green preaching tabs.

For sacramentals and sacraments other than the Eucharist, a white or gold cope, with a white, red, light blue, gold, or green stole, usually gold and/or white, but if the wedding coincides with certain feast days, if it is a Marian feast, blue, if it is a feast of the Apostles or Martyrs, red, and if it is a feast of the Confessors, or of Trinitarian significance, green. For baptism and chrismation served together, a white and gold cope and stole. For chrismation apart from Baptism, a white cope with a red stole, to indicate the tongues of fire of the Holy Spirit, or a green stole, to indicate new life in the Holy Spirit; in fact, whichever color will be used in the following Eucharist, really. For funerals of adults , a black cope with a purple or black stole; or alternately wnhte and white, if the family has issues with black. But for requiem services of Holy Communion, a black and purple cope, stole and chasuble. For burial services, and outdoor services in general, I prefer a cassock, surplice and tippet, as tippets are warm, but since they are black, if the funeral is for a child or the family desires white vestments and paraments, a white stole. I have asked a parishioner to make me a white knitted tippet.

I do something unusual during the liturgy, and that is, if I have an acolyte, I remove my cope and replace it with a chasuble at the end of the Synaxis, or Liturgy or the Catechumens (the Liturgy of the Word). I am not rejecting the theological position that the Synaxis and the Liturgy of the Faithful (the creed, the Anaphora, or Eucharistic Prayer, additional litanies, the Lord’s Prayer and the Distribution) are intimately connected, but rather am attempting to call attention to the idea of the Liturgy of the Catechumens as the liturgical holies, by wearing a cope, and the Liturgy of the Faithful as the holy of holies, by wearing a chasuble. During services of the Divine Office to be followed with the Eucharist, I do not wear the cope, but just the stole. In the event of a cold venue, I will instead of a Western Cope and Stole wear a West Syriac or Byzantine styled Phelonion (a sort of chasuble cope) and a phiro, or Syriac cap, atop which I wear a shash, a beautiful liturgical cap previously worn by the Chaldean Patriarch. Since the Chaldean Catholic Patriarch no longer wears one, I feel comfortable preserving the tradition and have a friend who fabricates them for me, but the shash I wear differs from that of the Chaldean Patriarch in that it is all black, rather than red or purple wrapped in black, as I am not a bishop. I remove the shash during the Anaphora.

In terms of liturgical colors, I follow a two-tone scheme, where the secondary color, if indicated, is that of the stole, and those vested in a Tunicle or in a stole and surplice wear the main color only; the seasonal colors indicated in italics are pre-empted by more specific color assignments.

Advent - Sarum Blue or Violet, except on the 3rd Sunday
3rd Sunday of Advent - Rose
Christmas Eve - Violet and gold
Christmas Day (including Vesperal Liturgy on Christmas Eve) - White
Christmastide - White
Feast of St. Stephen - Dark Red (see Maundy Thursday)
Holy Innocents - Black and Gold
**Circumcision of Our Lord and Feast of St. Basil - White
*Epiphany - White with light blue
Sundays following Epiphany - Gold
*Candlemass - White
Septuagesima, Sexagesima, - Purple and Gold
Quinquagesima, or Forgiveness Sunday - White with Purple Trim
Ash Wednesday - Black or Black and Violet, although I desire a tan vestment after the custom of the Rite of Lyons
Lent - Violet on Weekends, except on the 4th Sunday, Black or Black and Violet on Weekdays
4th Sunday of Lent - Rose
Annunciation - Blue and Gold
Palm Sunday - Green
Holy Week - Black, Maundy Thursday, which is dark red (crimson, maroon, burgundy, or an elegant purple-red color used in Lent by the Ambrosian Rite, which I also use in Lent, Advent, and the other fasts if one of the Sundays coincides with the feast of a martyr, confessor or hierarch, and on the feast of St. Stephen)
Easter Sunday - White and gold
Bright Week - White, Rose, Light Blue, and other bright colors
Low Sunday (St. Thomas Sunday) - Red and White
Eastertide - White and/or Gold until the Eve of Whitsunday
Ascension Thursday- Light blue and gold
Whitsunday (The Sunday before Pentecost) - Red
Trinity Sunday - Green
*Nativity of John the Baptist - Gold and Rose
The Apostles’ Fast - Dark Red on weekdays, Red on Sundays
*Feast of St. Peter and Paul - Red and Gold
Sundays before the Fast of the Theotokos - Gold
*Feast of the Transfiguration - White
Fast of the Theotokos (from the day after the Transfiguration until the Eve of the Nativity of the Theotokos, excepting the Dormition) - Blue
*Commemoration of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Dormition / Assumption, but made palettable for low church members) - Blue and Light Blue
*Beheading of John the Baptist - Violet and Red
*Nativity of the Theotokos - Blue and Rose
Kingdomtide (Sundays before Advent, especially the Sunday Last Before Advent, The Feast of Christ the King)
*Feast of the Holy Cross - Red and White
*Michaelmass - Blue and Red
Reformation Sunday (Last Sunday in October) - Red, or Green if the Previous Sunday was vested in Red
***All Saints Day - White
***All Souls Day - Black
Sunday of Christ the King - Green and Gold

* Feasts of the Lord - White
* Feasts of the Apostles - Red
* Feasts of the Theotokos - Blue
** Feasts of Martyrs - Red
** Feasts of Confessors - Green
**** Feasts of Church Fathers - Gold
**** Feasts of Archangels and Bodiless Powers - Violet and light blue, or blue and red

No Asterisk - Great Holy Day of the Church, which may be translated to any Sunday including the privileged Sundays of Lent and Advent. Special rubrics govern the translation of multiple Holy Days to the same Sunday, or the celebration of multiple Holy Days due to the intersection of the fixed calendar and the variable Paschal calendar. Specifically, if the Annunciation and Easter are celebrated together, this is called a Kyriopascha after the Eastern Orthodox tradition.
* First Class Observances - these can be translated to the nearest Ferial Sunday (ordinary Sunday not in Advent or Lenten Fast; for example, the Feast of St. Andrew could be translated to the Sunday before the Sunday of Christ the King, but not the Sunday after, which is the first Sunday of Lent. Multiple First Class Observances can be translated to a common Ferial Sunday, and commemorated together in place of the Feria, or translated to a privileged Sunday in Lent or Advent and commemorated with that Sunday.
** Second Class Observances - these can be combined with observances of equal or lower rank on a Ferial Sunday, or observed along with the Ferial Sunday
*** All Saints Day / All Souls Day - All Souls Day may be translated to the first Saturday in November, and All Saints Day the First Sunday, in which case they displace the Ferial Sunday and any other observances, but only if it is impossible to celebrate them on the 1st and 2nd of November.
**** Commemorations - These may be translated to a Saturday or Sunday as is convenient, and commemorated with other such occasions, and with non-privileged ferias; it is desirable that these be jointly celebrated with Second Class Observances.

When multiple observances, commemorations or ferias are celebrated together, the proper lectionary lessons for each are read, together with proper hymns, in the Synaxis, or in the case of lower ranking Commemorations, these may be the theme of part of the Divine Office but not the Eucharistic Liturgy.
 
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