There is no prescribed Asperges for use - it is entirely your choice.

I typically use the standard version (or a polyphonic version) through the year, and I or II for Advent / Septuagesimatide / Lent respectively... but that's just my own convention. If you use the standard one year-round, there is nothing wrong with that, just as if you were to use any of the others.

I of course exclude PT from the above - Vidi Aquam during that season.

Do I assume correctly that the only ones of us who are now entering 'Gesimatide' are EF folk and the Ordinariate? What a shame that the Church jettisoned this spiritually rich and potent pre-lenten period - not to mention the insane kicking aside of Epiphanytide. All for what?

Unlike the EF folk, though, we do not sing asperges me at all, though some would like to see that change. We do, though, sing vidi aquam throughout Eastertide - to the Norris chant.

"Do I assume correctly that the only ones of us who are now entering 'Gesimatide' are EF folk and the Ordinariate?"

Another reason I prefer the OF.

I strongly prefer the OF calendar in terms of not having a liturgical pre-Lent (given a choice between a relatively purely liturgical pre-Lent versus the gradual ascetic pre-Lent of the Eastern tradition, the latter makes more sense to me). The Church does not oblige me to long for a reinstatement of pre-Lent in its universal calendar. I remember the change from my youth, and it was one of the calendrical changes that made immediate sense to me.

https://catholicsensibility.wordpress.com/2011/03/05/pre-lent-catholic-culture/

YMMV .

Chris

You're not thick at all. I was being deliberately provocative because I realize people sometimes erroneously assume that all the regulars on this board are either open or crypto-traditionalists, whereas that's far from the case.

1. I don't see the *need* for the Western tradition of a *liturgical* warm-up given that it's been *many* centuries since the practice of pre-Lent *culminated* in annual Shrovetide confession for which one's penance was undertaken *during* Lent proper. It is, in that sense, a relic. I can see why people may find things to love about it ("relic" is not pejorative, but descriptive), but it doesn't speak to a preparatory need anymore. (Perhaps if I were a cleric or religious chanting the office and Mass conventually every day I could see some use in a gradual liturgical shift, but that would be a rather niche need, as it were.)

Rather, Lent is the period of preparation for *Easter*.

2. The Eastern tradition, of a feasting week entirely free of abstinence, followed by gradual increase in abstinence before Forgiveness Sunday and Clean Monday: *that* is what is closer to what you are talking about, but it's not been practically operative in the Roman rite for many centuries. (If anything, quite the contrary until recent generations.) It has a liturgical connection in the sense that these weeks are in the Triodion, but it's much less about liturgical preparation.

I have a Lenten program that I prepare and tweak from year to year, and that I just did the first part of last night: one of the things I do is try to use up stored food in the freezer, frig and pantry, but I also have to identify food that has gone bad in the process (sin of waste or overoptimism) or that I will give away, and that I did last night. I have to review my program of Scripture study and reflection for Lent (a bifurcated course reading of the Gospels) and Eastertide (course reading of Acts), what other prayer discipline I might add to daily Rosary, et cet. That's how I do pre-Lent. A priest suddenly showing up in purple on Sunday won't add a thing to it. (Btw, Septuagesima is also "sudden" just like "Ash Wednesday"; they are both arbitrary, albeit not capricious, dates.)

Chris

To clarify: what I meant is arbitrary is that a date of commencement of pre-Lent or Lent is arbitrary (it's purely a derived chosen date - it's not like it itself is a memorial of a specific event). I understand what is liturgically eliminated/reduced/changed during preconciliar Roman pre-Lent. I am glad we had the conciliar reform in that regard.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the old (ad lib) Kyrie Orbis Factor is the plainchant you sing with most polyphonic settings which utilize the Orbis Factor? I believe that was the one written in the Tye "Kyrie Orbis Factor", which confused me for quite a while, sadly.

Perhaps a more technical way to restate that for the OF is that Lent is a period of preparation for the Paschal Triduum. There being no Passiontide properly speaking in the OF, though there is a shift in certain orations in the last part of Lent, and the culmination of the sacraments of initiation (including renunciation of sin) being one of the liturgical foci of the Triduum.