Quotes on the Historic Lectionary
Note: research here was used to write this letter: A request to use the Ancient Lectionary
Added 11-11-24, for a Prayer Book Society Distillation of the same as below with a proposed Old Testament reading order:
Added 12-06-24, Prayer Book Society USA article on Prayer Book Catholicism
Fr Matthew Oliver, Senior Lecturer in Liturgics at Nashotah House Theological Seminary:
Why the RCL is killing churches – part 1 of 2
"The purpose of lectionaries, along with liturgies, creeds, and dogmatic statements, is among other things to provide for the church more concise articulations of “the fullness of saving doctrine” (to quote the Rev. David Curry’s essay on the three-year lectionary). Thus, one has to ask whether more Bible in the liturgy has actually brought about a better knowledge of the Bible and, even more importantly, a better grasp of “the fullness of saving doctrine.”“The problem that the [3-year lectionary] faces is simply the impossibility of providing at the eucharist what can only be properly provided through the offices.”
Why the RCL is killing churches, and what you can do about it – part 2 of 2
"The RCL sometimes proposes texts that are superficially “at odds” with each other, creating theological tensions that the preacher must then attempt to solve or leave unaddressed.’ … ‘Public recitation of these huge swathes of Scripture, all of which are basically unrelated to each other, can easily have a detrimental effect on nascent faith.”
One year with the 1928 lectionary - The Living Church, D.N.Keane
"With less text at each service to mark, learn, and inwardly digest, I found it far more likely that the sermon would touch on everything read and that I would walk out of the service remembering it. Less proved to be more.’ … ‘I also began to feel a more thematic unity across the Propers. This unity is something I often wanted but felt was lacking in the RCL.”
Discipling children a problem with the three-year lectionary, Father Richard Peers, Church of England
"Modern pedagogical techniques emphasize repetition, which the current three-year Sunday lectionary does not provide at all; proposes five solutions, of which only the fifth, adoption of the historic one-year lectionary, is really practical.”
Confessions of a one year lectionary convert, Rev Mark Surburg (LCMS)
“ The three-year lectionary has destroyed the coherence of the whole series of propers, making services thematically chaotic and the individual lessons, including the gospel, essentially immemorable. ‘St Augustine and Luther wrote sermons on the same texts for the same Sunday, a marvellous sign of the invisible continuity of the Church over time and space, despite the cruelties of schisms. A Bach cantata, though composed for the Lutheran context, can usually be more or less directly transplanted to the Roman or Anglican context, and it still fits perfectly [because of the historic one-year lectionary].’”
On Changing Lectionaries (PBS Canada) 08312024, Revd. Jonathan R. Turtle), Prayer Book Society Canada
"I contend that the ancient lectionary of the Western church –dating back one thousand years if not more –better “shows” us Jesus in the Scriptures. To borrow an analogy from Irenaeus, it accomplishes this by arranging the readings in such a way as to display the face of our Lord. Or, to mix my metaphors and borrow from Origen, the key to opening the door to one room of Scripture is hidden in another room of Scripture. As such the traditional Eucharistic lectionary teaches us to read Scripture rightly by doing so in light of Scripture’s true end, an encounter with the risen and living Jesus himself."
Reading the Bible as a Church, Gavin Dunbar, president of the Prayer Book Society USA
A three year cycle took the place of the one year ancient cycle, with most of the gospels for each year chosen from one of the synoptics (Year A is Matthew; Year B is Mark; Year C is Luke; with lessons from John spread through the three years.) A reading from the Old Testament, the psalms, and the other books of the New Testament precede the gospel lesson. For part of the year (Advent to Epiphany, and Lent to Trinity Sunday), these lessons aim at doctrinally thematic coherence (albeit with less success than the ancient lectionary). But for the rest of the year (Epiphany to Lent and Trinity Sunday to Advent), clumsily dubbed “ordinary time”, the gospels and epistles are selected according to the principle of lectio continua (or semi-continua). As a result, the gospels and epistles are in principle unrelated. Though the Old Testament lessons, were still chosen for their relation to the gospel lessons, the result is a loss of coherence in the Sunday lectionary. By intention it is no longer a doctrinally coherent, cohesive presentation of the Christian mystery, but an attempt to increase the amount of Scripture read.
Save the Lectionary, Save the World Excvbitor
Educational psychology is rarely mentioned in discussions of liturgy, perhaps for good reason. Yet the three-year lectionary and the modern form of the Mass contravenes some basic principles of the discipline. Cognitive load theory argues, on the basis of the empirically well-founded theory of working memory, that since we cannot simultaneously hold more than ten chunks of information in mind at once, teachers need to focus on direct instruction, repetition, and the committing of information to long-term memory, from whence it can be more easily recalled and manipulated. The modern Mass, with its proliferation of readings, stretches the cognitive capabilities even of the most intelligent congregation members beyond what they can bear.
Including the Old Testament readings in the Historic Lectionary:
A Neglected Gem The Sunday First Lessons in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer
"Moreover, the [1662] Sunday First Lessons better fit ancient Christian tradition than other schedules of Old Testament Lessons do. There is a very long history of Christian reading of Isaiah in Advent and Genesis in the Sundays preceding Lent (Septuagesima, Sexagesima, Quinquagesima). And the logic is sound: Isaiah prepares us for the birth of the Savior at Christmas, and the failures of Adam and the patriarchs prepare us for the mortification of Lent. Neither one of these ancient Christian patterns is consistently followed in other lectionaries, including the lectionary printed in the 1928 prayer book (i.e., the 1943) and the Revised Common Lectionary. In those lectionaries there is some Isaiah in Advent and some Genesis before Lent, but without consistency.”