_From - One-year Lectionary – Traditional English _

I. Introduction to the One–Year Lectionary

The traditional one-year lectionary in every edition of the Book of Common Prayer up to 1962 is its most enduring connection to the mind and practice of the early church, even more than the daily office and eucharistic services which have been revised more often down the centuries. The lectionary shows us how the early church understood the scriptures and understood itself. The scriptures are a witness to the person of Christ, who is alive, and through whom the church lives in God by faith. Christ is the church's living head, “for whom and to whom are all things” (1 Corinthians 8:6). The lectionary mirrors this faith because it is always structured “for Christ and to Christ”; in the lectionary, the readings break out of their canonical context to give voice to the church's communion with Jesus. The church's self-understanding as the body of Christ is so essential to the Christian message that, despite centuries of revisions to other aspects of the church's worship, the lectionary which emphasizes this theme has endured with relatively little change.

HISTORY

The Christian church inherits lectionary reading—the practice of reading scripture at public worship in a structured way associated with a calendar—from the synagogue, which to this day has a weekly Torah and Prophet selection for Sabbath services. In the New Testament, Jesus reads and interprets the appointed prophetic reading from Isaiah at the Nazareth synagogue (Luke 4:16–21). Paul may be referring to the appointed synagogue readings when he tells Timothy to “devote [him]self to the public reading of Scripture” (1 Timothy 4:13). Showing early signs of a distinctly Christian lectionary practice, Paul commands that his letters be read during the church's worship (1 Thessalonians 5:27, Colossians 4:7). Justin Martyr records that the apostolic writings were read alongside the prophets in the second century.

Each early Christian community set it own pattern for the proclamation of the scriptures. Most communities engaged in lectio continua (reading through a book in order over several weeks), but practices varied widely, from reading in totally continuous canonical sequence to reading collage-like compositions of verses from several places in scripture. As the church calendar developed, congregations began associating readings with certain occasions. At the same time, churches across regions were woven together by developing episcopal superstructures, which became a vehicle for standardizing and spreading the worship patterns of the most influential churches, especially Jerusalem, Antioch, Alexandria, Rome, and Constantinople. Patristic testimony suggests that many places in Western Europe were still reading the Old Testament at the Eucharist until the seventh century, after which time only the city of Milan used the Old Testament regularly at Mass.

Our first reference to the existence of a complete lectionary for the entire year is from Gennadius of Marseilles in the middle of the fifth century, although he does not list the readings. Around the same time, a document called the Comes Hieronymi, which is traditionally (and plausibly) attributed to St Jerome, first records particular readings for Sundays and Holy Days. The formative period of the Roman lectionary was in the seventh and eighth centuries, when it merged with and replaced local lectionaries across Western Europe, partly under the influence of standardization efforts during the Carolingian period. Although changes would later occur in the readings for individual occasions, the outline of the Western one-year lectionary has remained in place ever since.

It is remarkable—and a testimony to the lectionary's enduring value—that in both Lutheran and Anglican realms the traditional lectionary remained mostly intact through the Reformation. Thomas Cranmer's revisions to the lectionary in the first Book of Common Prayer involved the lengthening of several readings to include an entire biblical pericope, a small number of moved or changed readings on Sundays, and a greater number of substitutions on Holy Days, usually in the Collects and Epistles. The 1962 Canadian Book of Common Prayer introduced another round of revisions—arguably more intrusive than the Reformation changes—but still the 1962 Prayer Book agrees with the medieval readings more often than it disagrees.

PURPOSE OF THE ONE–YEAR LECTIONARY

However, antiquity alone could not justify continuing to use the one-year lectionary today. The best apology for the ancient lectionary is the one St Paul gave for all of scripture: it is given “to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus” and it is “profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness” (2 Timothy 3:15–17). The purpose for which God breathed out the scriptures is not so that we could know the scriptures, but so that we could know him. Scripture is for given for our “training,” our formation, so that we can achieve spiritual maturity (Ephesians 4:13) as we are conformed to the image of God's Son (Romans 8:29).

In the patristic and medieval periods, the difference between reading for the sake of familiarity with the text and reading for the sake of spiritual enlargement was discussed as a difference between “literal” and “allegorical” reading. The meaning of these terms has shifted in modern times, so that we now take “literal” to mean “reading the text according to its intention and context” and we take “allegorical” to mean “reading the text as a metaphor for a concern extrinsic to the text itself.” But ancient commentators understood the contrast differently: “literal” and “allegorical” refer to different levels on which a text operates simultaneously, both intrinsic to the text. Literal reading concerns the “facts” of the text: facts about the story it tells, facts about its prose or poetry style, facts about the logical structure of its argument, etc. Good literal reading yields a “detached,” “scholarly,” or “neutral” view, an understanding of details in the text with no interpretive comment on their relationship to the reader or the reader's world. These higher-level questions about a text's meaning to us, the validity of its claims, its appeal to our moral intuitions, its ability to stir our hopes and fears, and every other question of response and application, belonged to the “allegorical sense.”

The one-year lectionary is built for allegorical reading. Through it we learn about Jesus himself rather than learning about the biblical text which testifies to him. The one-year lectionary dislocates its readings from their context in the canon of scripture—canonical context being a concern which belongs to the “literal” analysis of the biblical textual tradition— to help the church realize the purposes for which it reads scripture in worship at all. The lectionary proclaims the lordship of Jesus Christ, it testifies to the church's encounter with that living Christ, and forms the faithful into mature members of his body. The lectionary is an allegory, a text that comes preencoded with an interpretive purpose. This purpose is to show Jesus to the church as he is understood by the church's faith.

Both before and after the Reformation, commentators have presented lectionary's testimony to Christ as an aspect of the church's “doctrine,” since the essential elements of the church's belief are represented with simplicity and acuity in the traditional readings. For example, rather than focusing primarily on the birth narrative as one might expect, the principal service for Christmas Day treats the doctrine of the Incarnation in theological language from John's Gospel and from Hebrews. For another example, both Passion Sunday and Good Friday discuss the doctrine of the Atonement directly. The treatment of so many essentials of the Christian faith has led to the development of commentary traditions which associate different periods of the year with catechetical schemes such as “the Apostles' Creed,” “the Ten Commandments,” and “the Seven Deadly Sins.”

But if the lectionary is “doctrine,” it is a curriculum for Christian life as much as it is a static representation of the truth perceived by faith. The commentary tradition especially emphasizes this in the second half of the year. A common complaint about the Revised Common Lectionary is that, in Ordinary Time, it dallies through long Old Testament narratives, context-less theological Epistles, and repetitive Gospel miracles without ever arriving at “the point.” This is not so in the ancient lectionary. The second half of the year uses some of the most celebrated and familiar passages of Paul's Epistles, especially passages with a moral focus, alongside evocative and challenging Gospel scenes and parables— and each pair rewards the reader with a practical encouragement to live virtuously by the grace of God. Among the available sources of spiritual refreshment, the one-year lectionary is the bread-and-butter option: nourishing, reliable, revisitable.

The lectionary reflects the ancient and intuitive wisdom that human beings learn through repetition. People not familiar with the one-year lectionary often assume that it must be tiresome to repeat readings every year, but this is not the experience of most people whose parishes use this lectionary. Instead, their experience is one of deepening familiarity. It is not uncommon in traditional lectionary environments to hear laypeople say things like, “I've heard it every year for the past ten years, but I think I'm finally getting a handle on the parable of the wedding banquet,” or “I've always found today's Gospel about the raising of the widow's son comforting since my own son passed.” This deepening familiarity with essential scriptural texts is simply not available when repetition is spaced out every three years, or in the context of a higher volume of scripture per Sunday, as in the Revised Common Lectionary.

The traditional lectionary is the voice in which the church articulates her life in Christ. The lectionary is not just a form in which doctrine is presented to the church, but a document of the church. The lectionary is one the church's ancient constitutional documents alongside the scriptures as a canon, the ancient liturgies, the creeds, and the apostolic episcopal form of polity.
We can therefore ask of the lectionary, “What does the church say about herself?” The lectionary's answer could be stated this way: “The church is Christ's body, the site of his continuing incarnate life, a participant in his divine sonship to the Father, and the bearer of his Spirit.” The lectionary has a builtin theological disposition, a tendency to emphasize the indwelling of God in the church and the church's participation in God through Christ. This focus emerges, despite the relatively small portion of the Bible which it uses, because the lectionary returns repeatedly to a group of themes which all resonate with the central idea of participation in God: that we are given new birth by God's Spirit, that the love of Christians for one another is the love of God made manifest, that both our repentance from sin and our rising to new life take place as members in Christ, that the joy of the kingdom is realized among us as we await his return, and that Christ is our daily spiritual food.

Although a doctrinal approach to the lectionary illuminates some of its aspects, it is also true that, were it simply presenting a systematic theology, it would be very different indeed. For example, it might include readings from the early chapters of Romans, which the received lectionary does not even though modern commentators usually consider them essential; or it might omit much of the lengthy and winding discourse on the Holy Spirit in John 14–16 in Eastertide. This latter example is illustrative: although John 14–16 is difficult for interpreters and preachers, and although it takes up “space” which might otherwise be used for more obvious Eastertide choices such Jesus' resurrection appearances, it is included in the traditional lectionary because discussion of the Holy Spirit concerns the church's experience of living in present communion with the risen Christ.

Although we have said that the one-year lectionary is practical, it is also challenging. Its challenge and invitation is to peel back, cycle by cycle, the layers of meaning in the Gospel proclamation that Christ is alive and present among his people. Even though any congregation can profit from adopting the one-year lectionary, its real value will not be realized in one, or two, or even five or ten cycles. Its sweetest fruits are given to people and parishes who commit to using it for a very long time.

The goal is that, over the course of years, these carefully-chosen group of passages will become so familiar that, transcending their role as objects of interpretation and understanding, they will become a form of thought and language through which a community understands itself and its world. The point is not for a congregation to understand what the Bible has to say about participation in Christ, but to receive the biblical text as the articulate testimony of what the body of Christ experiences in living communion with her Head.

COMPARISON TO THE REVISED COMMON LECTIONARY

Jesus criticizes those who “search the scriptures because [they] think that in them [they] have eternal life” while forgetting that the scriptures have shape and meaning as a testimony to God the Word (John 5:39). All of scripture is useful for growth in holiness, but that does not mean that knowledge of scripture is equivalent to or unfailingly promotes spiritual flourishing. The Revised Common Lectionary may be built for learning about scripture; but the ancient lectionary is built for learning about Jesus—and entering communion with him.

The Revised Common Lectionary is built on the assumption that scripture literacy alone is enough to promote spiritual revival, without theological structure being given to that literacy. In the middle of the last century, amid general efforts for spiritual and liturgical renewal, the Roman Catholic Church addressed the truly lamentable poverty of biblical literacy among Catholics by discarding the traditional lectionary and substituting a new three-year cycle. Mainline Protestants, who shared struggles with biblical literacy, also signed on, hoping that the new lectionary would give them opportunities to tell the whole story of the Bible. Everyone reasoned that, if laypeople knew the Bible better, they would see how they are participants in an ongoing story that reaches back to creation and forward to the consummation of all things in God. They would learn to receive the Christian faith as a narrative for life into which they could fit themselves, rather than just a set of opinions and ritual practices according to their various church traditions.

This is an inspiring thought, and doubtless there are some attentive people for whom the Revised Common Lectionary has been fruitful. But overall the project was unsuccessful. Instead of a period of renewal, the introduction of the new lectionary correlates, alongside many other factors, with a period of precipitous decline in faith engagement. Either the Revised Common Lectionary was unable to significantly improve biblical literacy, or it was incorrect that biblical literacy by itself would produce renewal. In fact, both explanations of the RCL's failure are true.

The RCL was not able to significantly impact biblical literacy of the Bible for at least two reasons. A three-year cycle of three long readings and a psalm every Sunday is far too much text and far too little repetition for deep learning. But even were congregations able to process all the material put before them, the RCL would still be unable to meet its purported goal of proclaiming the entire Bible. Despite having the reputation of going through “the whole Bible” in three years, in fact it only covers about 20% of the scriptures. Walter Deller breaks down the coverage of each biblical book in “Lectionary, Church, and Context—the Disaster of the Revised Common Lectionary.”^[1] Only 8.4% of the Old Testament is read, and only 50% of the New. No book is betterrepresented than Ephesians, of which nearly 75% is read, while several books (Obadiah, Nahum, Zechariah, Song of Songs, 2 John, 3 John, Jude) are excluded entirely. Many others only receive a handful of verses over the entire three-year cycle (six verses of Jonah, eight from Habbakuk, eleven from Esther, just over 10% of Revelation, etc). Introducing the entire Bible is a task far too large to be accomplished on Sunday mornings alone.

But even if biblical literacy could have been achieved this way, the assumption that it would have brought about renewal is not necessarily true. As mainline denominations collapse, it has become apparent that the problem is not only that people have left, but that those who remain are woefully uninformed about basic tenets and practices of their faith. Although contemporary ecumenical criticisms about sectarianism may be well-placed, previous generations at least knew enough about their faith to disagree over it!

The decline in theological and spiritual literacy would be no surprise for a user of the one-year lectionary. The traditional readings provide opportunities for addressing key doctrinal, moral, and spiritual themes. Annual repetition means that congregations can advance these conversations from cycle to cycle. Treating important issues of faith and spirituality with subtilty is a privilege of those who have steadily built a deep familiarity with the relevant biblical texts. By contrast, the RCL is the lectionary for a church that wants to be a mile wide, even if the cost is being only an inch deep.

II. The Old Testament Supplement

RATIONALE

Nothing we have said above about the virtues of the one-year lectionary or the failures of the Revised Common Lectionary necessitates supplementing it with Old Testament readings, as we have done in this volume. The traditional lectionary fed the people of God for more than a millennium without an Old Testament reading, and its logic is already living and active in the Collects, Epistles, and Gospels without any further exposition by additional readings. The rationale for the Old Testament supplement is pastoral, not theological.

However, there is also nothing theologically objectionable about supplementing the one-year lectionary with Old Testament readings. For the first several centuries of the church's life Old Testament readings were part Eucharistic worship alongside many of the same Epistles and Gospels we still use. Several provisions in the Prayer Book suggest that the Prayer Book's editors, from Thomas Cranmer to the twentieth century, expected that the Old Testament would be heard in conjunction with the service of Holy Communion. The 1662 Prayer Book included a Table of “Proper Lessons to be read at Morning and Evening Prayer on the Sundays throughout the Year.” This table only listed Old Testament Lessons, suggesting that these readings were meant to add an Old Testament voice to the existing Epistles and Gospels “proper” to each occasion, and heard at the Morning Prayer service immediately before Communion. In the Canadian Prayer Book of 1962, a rubric for Morning Prayer explains that everything after the first reading and its canticle may be omitted when the service is followed by Holy Communion, effectively joining the two services into a single service with three readings.

Given that we may read the Old Testament alongside the traditional eucharistic lectionary, there are at least two pastoral reasons to think that we should do so.

The primary rationale for developing the Old Testament series has been to facilitate parishes transitioning from the Revised Common Lectionary to the one-year lectionary. Most contemporary parishioners have only or mostly known a liturgical environment dominated by the Revised Common Lectionary. For them, one of the most significant factors that makes the traditional lectionary a hard pill to swallow is that it does not include an Old Testament reading. The faithful expect to hear the Old Testament read and preached— and rightly so! Every Christian tradition has made space for the Old Testament, even if it has not been at the Eucharist. Unfortunately, the healthy desire to engage with the Old Testament has become one of the principal reasons that congregations do not use the traditional lectionary. If you were to ask the average lay reader why he prefers the Revised Common Lectionary to the Prayer Book lectionary, besides “Everybody uses it,” you would probably be told that the RCL is superior because it includes Old Testament Lessons. Even among clergy, only diocesan pressure to use the RCL is a greater incentive against the Prayer Book lectionary. The most profound impact of several decades of RCL use has not been the intended (and unsuccessful) increase in biblical literacy, but that it has fostered a popular devotion to the Old Testament as holy scripture suitable for proclamation. Given its other deficiencies, it is unfortunate that a healthy devotion to the Old Testament has bound congregations to the Revised Common Lectionary. Our goal in supplementing the one-year lectionary has been to demonstrate that it remains a viable alternative for modern parishes, and that it can be accommodated to the desire to hear the Old Testament on Sundays.

Second, the Old Testament supplement was proposed to bring the existing ad hoc practice of some parishes into a common pattern. Especially in BCP-friendly congregations, it is a poor witness to the Anglican tradition of common prayer that parishes which already use an Old Testament supplement draw eclectically from many sources, not observing a common discipline. We hope that endorsement of a single supplement by the Prayer Book Society of Canada will unify the practice of supplementing the one-year lectionary, at least within this country.

PROCESS

The Old Testament Lectionary Supplement Project began in Autumn 2021, when our editor proposed it to National Council of the Prayer Book Society of Canada, giving the rationale outlined above. A committee of scholars and clergy—some with biblical studies or liturgical studies expertise, some with a practical preaching focus; some with extensive background in the one-year lectionary, some with little—was assembled shortly thereafter. This group remained largely consistent, with some additions along the way, throughout our three-year process.

SURVEY OF SIMILIAR PROJECTS

After a general discussion of the history, theology, commentary tradition, and contemporary use of the one-year lectionary, we surveyed existing resources which supplement the traditional lectionary with Old Testament readings. At the outset, it was a possibility to study and endorse one of these sources rather than creating our own, but a discussion of these sources will reveal why we did not choose this approach.

The 1896 meeting of the Prussian Union of churches at Eisenach authorized a series of Old Testament Lessons to complement the Lutheran version of the traditional lectionary, which substantially agrees with the Anglican lectionary. R.C.H. Lenski, a commentator on this series, sites an unnamed German author familiar with the committee discussions at Eisenach, saying that “the entire church year is molded and shaped by the gospel texts,” and that “these Old Testament texts are simply Old Testament counterparts to the corresponding gospel texts.”^[2] The single-minded emphasis on complementing the Gospel reading is the primary reason why we chose not to adopt the Lutheran Old Testament series wholesale, instead referring to it for suggestions as necessary. Although the Gospel reading certainly has pride of place liturgically, our study of the received lectionary found that it is not always the definitive voice in the chord of the readings, but is in fact just as likely to support the Epistle as the Epistle is to support the Gospel—or, even more often, the meaning of a set of readings comes from the intertextuality of Gospel, Epistle, and Collect together. Moreover, the Eisenach lectionary over-uses typological correspondences which repeat images from, but do not illuminate the rationale for, the existing readings. (For more on this criticism, see below.)

The 1662 the Book of Common Prayer included a table of first Lessons for use at Matins or Evensong for all the Sundays and Holydays throughout the year. However, this series relied on a system of continuous reading which was not intended for thematic coherence with the eucharistic readings. It seems instead to have been designed to promote summary-level knowledge of the Old Testament through Sunday reading, primarily for those not following the daily office lectionary through the week. In 1918 (ratified in 1922), the Church of England authorized a new daily office lectionary which, rather than following the civil calendar, followed the church year. Although the readings for Sundays changed significantly, they continued to represent the daily office in summary form rather than being tightly linked to the eucharistic readings. This lectionary was adapted into the 1962 daily office lectionary in the Canadian Prayer Book.

However, the choices for Holy-days were more coherent with the eucharistic readings, probably because there was no concern for continuous reading at play. In the lead-up to the publication of a new Book of Common Prayer for the Church of India, Pakistan, Burma, and Ceylon in 1960, a new series of eucharistic Old Testament Lessons was published. For the Sundays of the year, these Old Testament selections were entirely novel, but the Holy-days were drawn from the 1918/1922 daily office lectionary of the Church of England. This supplement to the traditional lectionary was adopted by the mother church in 1965 and published around the world, including in Canada. This series was recently republished online by the Church of England (2017). This resource has the same weakness as the Eisenach lectionary: it over-emphasizes the Gospels as the dominant reading in every case, and over-relies on simple typologies and verbal correspondences which are not theologically illuminating.

In Canada around the turn of the millenium, the Diocese of Saskatchewan began publishing a list of Old Testament Lessons drawn approximately equally from the Lutheran and Anglican resources. This list is still published annually by that diocese. Although we have not adopted this resource wholesale, the Saskatchewan lectionary was our most regular point of contact with previous projects. We often drew suggestions from it and would frequently fine-tune our approach by comparison and contrast to the Saskatchewan series. We have followed the Saskatchewan lectionary, and the Indian lectionary before it, in relying mainly on the 1918/1922 daily office lectionary for Holy Days.

Finally, and well out-of-time with the other resources, we have made occasional reference to the ancient Ambrosian lectionary. The Church of Milan was the only see in the Western Church never to lose its Old Testament Lessons, which all other churches did by the seventh century. Its lectionary may represent a form of the Roman lectionary older than the one in use in England at the Reformation. Although this might seem like a precedent strong enough for simply adopting it and its Old Testament Lessons, its Epistles and Gospels vary from the Anglican readings most of the time, meaning that its Lessons would not make sense as a supplement to our Prayer Book. We had to use it, like the other resources, simply for reference and inspiration.

PRINCIPLES OF SELECTION

With these resources in front of us, we discussed the principles according to which we would make selections. We revisited and refined these principles regularly once we began discussing particular readings. Rather than applying a single method to the existing lectionary (such as “start with the Gospel and find a typology for it”), we aimed to select readings which would respect the intertextuality of the Collect, Epistle, and Gospel. We were attentive to the possibility that these three elements might interact differently on different occasions or in different seasons.

Underlying this attention to the dynamism of the lectionary was a conviction that sets of readings in the traditional lectionary articulate “themes.” These themes may not be so specific that they can be summarized in a single phrase for every occasion, but are also clear enough that they can give shape to the Christian year. The existing Epistle-Gospel lectionary already has a “shape” or “structure” into which the Old Testament Lessons should “fit.” We therefore exegeted the relationship between a Collect, Epistle, and Gospel, trying to discern this shape before considering any Old Testament Lessons to supplement them.

Even after this exegesis, choosing readings remained more an art than a science. As we discussed our principles of selection, we found it easier to begin by articulating approaches which would not be appropriate to selecting new readings. We identified several errors which we tried to avoid:

Erasure of the Old Testament.

Use of the Old Testament is essential to Christian theology, but it is also hermeneutically fraught. Approaches to the Old Testament that exclusively foreground how it anticipates rather than articulates the revelation of God in Christ— too often interpreted as the revelation of God in the New Testament as opposed to the Old— often miss the richness of Old Testament texts in their canonical and literary contexts. As Christian scripture in its own right, we can read the Old Testament as a testimony to the truth in Christ without needing to refer it to a New Testament parallel at every point. Jesus Christ was already the “pearl hidden in the field” of the Old Testament before the New Testament was written, even if it is only after the resurrection that Jesus opens the scriptures to his disciples so that they can see that the Law and the Prophets testify to him (Luke 24:27).

We discussed the danger that a new lectionary supplement could “erase” the Old Testament by using it mostly or exclusively to “proof text” the New Testament, whether prophetically or typologically. In most contemporary lectionaries, typological selections tend to be narrowly inter-textual, intended merely to illuminate a similarity between two biblical passages without suggesting the significance of this association for the Christian reader. For example, it would be tempting to appoint the ascension of Elijah for Ascension Day, as many lectionaries do. There is a correspondence in image and action between this story and the Ascension of Jesus, but that correspondence only illuminates itself. It teaches us nothing about the Gospel, but only that the Gospel has Old Testament parallels. It makes the Old Testament very ignorable. We therefore shied away from many of the obvious typological precedents for gospel stories.

We also discussed the case of prophetic or typological texts with an eschatological element, which can be “erased” by locating their fulfillment narrowly in a particular event in historical the life of Jesus or the church (for example, the prophecy of Zechariah on Palm Sunday). When we have used eschatological passages, we have chosen ones oriented towards the vision of the end of days common to both Old and New Testaments: the (second) coming of the Son of Man for judgement.

Limitation by Synthesis.

A danger of intertextual reading is that, when one approaches two texts with the assumption that they contribute to a single meaning, one interprets each text only or principally according to the things that the two have in common. We are tempted only to read the middle of their Venn diagram. Themes in each text not shared by the other are ignored, and so the meaning of each is limited by its synthesis with the other. This is something that goes on already in the received lectionary, and contributes to its thematic acuity. However, we did not want to advance this trajectory of limitation through our addition of a third reading. It would be easy, by selecting passages which resonated with only one theme in an Epistle-Gospel set, to define the meaning of each occasion so narrowly that the scriptures chosen would lose the opportunity to speak freely. We instead preferred metaphors like “gentle amplification” (see below) to select readings which would enhance rather than limit the existing propers. We tolerated a degree of non-alignment with the Epistles and Gospels, and celebrated materials which complexified what was already present.

Overshadowing.

Although we did not want to tokenize the Old Testament by limiting its use to explicit New Testament parallels, we also tried to avoid drawing attention away from the traditional selections by introducing too many new themes, puzzles, or features of interest. We want to avoid “overshadowing” or “outweighing” the existing readings, or “over-working” the interpreter to discover a theme we have chosen to focus on which is not a central concern of the Epistle or Gospel. This is a failure to be “gentle” as we amplify the received lectionary.
As we talked our way around these potential pitfalls, several metaphors emerged for describing what, positively, it could mean for an Old Testament Lesson to “fit” with the Epistle and Gospel.

Companionship.

Our prevailing metaphor was to seek “good companions” for the received Collects, Epistles, and Gospels. We sought Old Testament readings which have much in common with the Epistles and Gospels readings, but whose thematic material could not be reduced to a mere repetition of them in different language. Just as genuine friendship between people involves having something in common without being identical, such that there is a middle space of difference which creates the possibility of conversation, we looked for Old Testament readings which would open up a collaborative, amicable conversation with the Epistles and Gospels.

Gentle amplification

Gentle amplification was our metaphor for how Old Testament Lessons should contribute something to the existing lectionary— after all, if they didn't contribute anything, why would we have undertaken the project?— while also being “gentle,” not introducing so much new material that it significantly distorts the meaning of the existing lectionary. “Amplification” doesn't just mean “addition,” but is an analogy to amplified sound. What the supplemental Lessons should bring to the lectionary is volume: they add another voice into the mix so that the supplemented lectionary gives a more resonant and fulsome witness to the same themes which were already present in the unsupplemented Epistle-Gospel pairs.

Doxological selections.

It would be a mistake to treat the Old Testament selections as if our only concern was for “theme.” The proclamation of scripture, like the celebration of the sacraments, is a memorial enactment of God's merciful deeds. To proclaim scripture is to declare that it is worth calling to mind what God has done, that these acts of salvation are the basis for ongoing thanksgiving, and that we desire to have those mysteries re-enacted among us. It is an act of worship.

This is, in theory, true of all scripture. However, certain passages possess an especially “doxological” character: they are primarily concerned with praising God in an elevated register which stirs up our desire for the coming of the kingdom. Doxological contributions to the lectionary do not need to have much narrative or theological complexity, although they will often be rich in material on the attributes and acts of God. They draw the hearer not into a detached understanding of the meaning of God's deeds, but into a rapturous act of praise for God's acts of salvation which we understand intuitively and subjectively. We found that it was especially appropriate to select doxological readings for Holy Days.

Appeal to precedent.

We took a moderate approach to the precedent set by similar projects. We have sometimes appealed to precedent when making an argument for an Old Testament selection, but an argument from precedent was never decisive. We have also preferred precedents from some sources to others, giving pride of place to ancient lectionaries. For example, on the few occasions of the year when the Sarum Missal appoints an Old Testament Lesson, we have used these readings if the Sarum Epistles and Gospels also correspond to the Canadian Lectionary. We have also used some selections from the Ambrosian Rite, and have appealed to the precedent of patristic lectionaries for big-picture decisions like appointing the Acts of the Apostles for Eastertide rather than an Old Testament Lesson. On some occasions, the Canadian BCP itself, whether through its daily office lectionary or other material (for example the Penitential Service for Ash Wednesday with its use of Joel) make our choice clear. We have treated the other resources discussed above as helpful resources, but not authorities.

REVIEW

The working group met regularly to discuss suggested readings throughout 2022 and 2023. In January 2024 we submitted our draft selections to scholars and priests across the continent, some within the Prayer Book Society and some outside, and received feedback shortly before Easter. We reconvened to incorporate the feedback.

III. Use of this Edition

SWITCHING YOUR CONGREGATION TO THE ONE–YEAR LECTIONARY

Because of the recent history of “liturgy wars” in North American Anglicanism, one might imagine that it would be a cause of tension to transition a contemporary congregation using the Revised Common Lectionary onto the one-year lectionary. However, the experience of priests who have guided their congregations through this change has usually been that it is not nearly as challenging as anticipated.

In the Anglican Church of Canada, the 1962 Book of Common Prayer remains an authorized liturgy of the church and can be used without special authorization by the diocesan bishop. This applies to the lectionary contained within it as well. In the absence of a directive to the contrary from one's bishop—a directive whose legality would in any case be dubious, since it would effectively de-authorize a liturgy authorized by General Synod—a priest may use the 1962 lectionary without special episcopal approval. The supplement of Old Testament Lessons has not yet received approval from the Faith,Worship, and Ministry Committee of General Synod. If a priest feels the need to seek episcopal permission to use the supplement, even bishops who do not have a Prayer Book background may appreciate hearing how the supplement brings the traditional lectionary into greater conformity to contemporary patterns of worship found in the Book of Alternative Services.

Pastorally, the main concerns of a priest transitioning his congregation to the one-year lectionary should be to facilitate the change for lectors and for lectionary study groups, and anyone else who regularly interacts with the lectionary. Lectors should be shown the printed volume before the first Sunday on which they are asked to read from it. It should be pointed out to them that the pattern of the readings is the same as they are used to from the RCL: Lesson, Psalm, Epistle, Gospel. (The Introit Psalm should probably not be assigned to a lector, but read/sung in procession between a leader/cantor and people, or sung by the choir.) Lectors who are accustomed to looking up the readings in advance may be assisted by receiving a gift copy of the lectern lectionary, or photocopied printouts of the readings for the days on which they are reading, or online resources supporting the oneyear lectionary such as Old Testament Supplement's page on prayerbook.ca. Likewise, lectionary study groups who are used to relying on online sources for their study should be directed to resources supporting the one-year lectionary, such as LectionaryCentral.com. It may be helpful to replace church calendars in foyers and sacristies with calendars supporting the one-year lectionary, such as the calendar published by St Peter's Publications (Charlottetown, PE). As for the rest of your congregation, experience says that people in the pews will hardly notice if you switch to the one-year lectionary, especially in your first year of doing so before readings begin repeating.

When explaining why you are initiating this change, especially in parishes which do not identify as “traditional,” it may be helpful to avoid divisive words like “traditional,” “ancient,” “normative,” or “historical.” Instead, emphasize the benefits of the one-year lectionary which have been discussed above. You might also encourage curious laypeople to look up the one-year lectionary for themselves. It is not hard to find sources online, from a variety of Anglican and non-Anglican perspectives, criticizing the Revised Common Lectionary and praising the traditional lectionary.

If you are a layperson interested in the oneyear lectionary, we encourage you to speak to your priest about it. Be respectful, gentle, and avoid as much as possible the perception that you are recommending the one-year lectionary because of partisanship toward traditional liturgies if your priest is not on the same page. There are many good reasons that a person of any churchmanship should find value in the one-year lectionary.

DUPLICATION OF DAILY OFFICE READINGS

On some occasions, especially on Holy Days, the supplemental readings were drawn from the daily office lectionary for the same occasions in the 1962 Book of Common Prayer. If your community wishes to observe a Morning or Evening Prayer Service back-to-back with a Eucharist using this lectionary, a few approaches might taken. The duplicated reading could be omitted at either Morning/Evening Prayer or at the Eucharist (for a total of four readings between the two services), or a daily office reading from another service could be substituted for the duplicated reading (e.g. using the Evening Prayer Old Testament Lesson at Morning Prayer when the Morning Prayer Lesson is duplicated by this lectionary), or any other solution amenable to the officiating clergy.

MISSAL PAGES & USE AS A GOSPEL BOOK

In the centre of this edition, several blank pages are provided in which to paste (tape) a printed version of your community's rite for the Holy Eucharist. The result will be a “missal,” a single book containing all the necessary texts for celebrating Holy Communion. Inserting tabs or ribbons would enhance this volume's usefulness as a missal. Make this book your own, according to your community's needs.

This edition may also be used in procession as a Gospel book. Its cover is intentionally plain for this reason. However, for processional use we encourage covering the barcode which we have been required to place on the back cover with a matching red colour, or purchasing a Gospel-book cover into which the lectionary will fit.

READING/SINGING THE PSALMS

This volume has been laid out such that the second half of each verse of the Introit and Gradual Psalms has been italicized to facilitate congregational use, annotating the divisions between and within verses without intrusive numbers or other marks. Given this layout, the most natural way to foster congregational participation in the reading of these psalms is to provide the congregation with matching texts and to have them read the italicized second half of each verse. At the time of this edition's publication, a Microsoft Word document with the Introit and Gradual for each occasion in the lectionary, pre-formatted, is available on the website of the Prayer Book Society of Canada (prayerbook.ca).
However, any number of other approaches to congregational participation or choral leadership in the reading or singing of the Psalms are also possible. In terms of musical resources, of particular interest are the Canadian Psalter (Anglican Church of Canada, 1963) and the Canadian Psalter, Plainsong Edition (Anglican Church of Canada, 1963).

INTROIT ANTIPHONS

The Introit Psalm is traditionally sung with aGloria Patri and the repetition of an antiphon, usually drawn from the same Psalm. This is how we have presented the Introits in this edition. However, which verses should be used as antiphons is not specified by the 1962 Prayer Book. We have always chosen antiphons from the Introit Psalm itself, using the same verses as the Introit Chants of medieval worship did whenever possible. Where this was not possible we have selected verses which resonate with themes present in the other readings.

POSITION OF THE GRADUAL PSALMS

In the Book of Common Prayer, the Gradual is appointed for use between the Epistle and Gospel readings. However, in adapting the Canadian lectionary to a three-reading structure, we have chosen to present the Gradual Psalm between the Old Testament Lesson and the Epistle. This presentation should facilitate a smooth transition to using the supplemented one-year lectionary for congregations already familiar with the pattern of the Revised Common Lectionary (OT, Psalm, Epistle, Gospel). Many congregations add musical “padding” between the Epistle and Gospel readings by singing a hymn or an Alleluia.

However, the Gradual Psalm sometimes has resonances with the Gospel reading specifically, as should be expected given that it immediately precedes the Gospel in its original context. Congregations may choose to read the Gradual between the Epistle and Gospel, as the Prayer Book directs, even though this edition is not laid out in that way.

ACTS IN EASTERTIDE

In Eastertide, we have selected Lessons from the Acts of the Apostles instead of from the Old Testament. In this, we have followed the universal consensus of the early church, including the Ambrosian and East Syriac Rites which continue to use the Old Testament at the Eucharist, the testimony of St Augustine about the ancient African Rite, and the Hispanic and Byzantine Rites in which Acts replaces the Epistle in Eastertide. In brief, the theological rationale for this replacement is that the Acts of the Apostles tells the continuing story of God's people after their wilderness wanderings with the Israelites in Lent. The church shows in action and in history how the life of the risen Christ continues in his body, the church. The Acts are, in fact, the centrepiece of the church's Eastertide meditation on the meaning of the resurrection, to which the BCP Daily Office Lectionary gives evidence.