THE TRADITIONAL EUCHARISTIC LECTIONARY of the Western Church, thought extinct by some,
is alive and well in many parishes throughout the world. Anglicans, Roman
Catholics, Western-rite Orthodox, Old Catholics and many protestant churches,
are still using that ancient and truly ecumenical eucharistic lectionary
which has been feeding the faithful for well over one thousand years.
The Anglican Book of Common Prayer, The Roman Missal, The St. Andrew Service
Book (Antiochian Orthodox), and many more beloved books of the Church contain
within them (or they did, until recently) what is now referred to as "the
traditional lectionary" of the Western Church. Robert Crouse
expresses well the heart of the traditional lectionary:
In the cycle of the Christian Year,
in the ancient lectionary - that cycle of Epistle and Gospel lessons which
has served the Church for well over a millennium ... the essential message
of Holy Scripture, God's word to us, is set before us in an orderly and supremely
logical way. As we follow the lessons appointed for the Sundays and
the great festivals, as we meditate upon them, as we open our minds and hearts
to understand the pattern and meaning of them, we are led, step by step,
into an ever deeper and clearer perception of Christian truth and the essentials
of Christian life.
Since the introduction of the new three-year "Common Lectionary," first in
the Roman Catholic Church, and adopted by many of the Reformed and Protestant
Churches, the traditional lectionary - in many parishes - has fallen by the
wayside. In many congregations, though, even through the decades of
"out-with-the-old and in-with-the-new", the traditional lectionary survived,
particularly within Anglicanism. In more recent times, though, the traditional
lectionary has been dusted off, and with great zeal has been brought back
into the eucharistic life of western Christendom. This website
is both a product of this recent revival, and an attempt to spread the word
to all Christians: the traditional lectionary is not dead, and it is still
as theologically and spiritually vital as it ever was!
Within these pages you will, in time, find sermons, music, commentaries,
scriptural texts, anecdotes, images, and even some humour.... all based on
the traditional lectionary. We hope to be adding resources continually. We have materials ready for all of the
Sundays in the Christian Year now and hope soon to have materials for the
Holy Day lections.
At the current time all of our "propers" are from the Book of Common
Prayer 1662 and also, on the few Sundays where it differs, from the Canadian
BCP, 1962 revision . Although the traditional lectionary is generally
speaking "common" among many churches, there are slight variations and additions
made by each church. We want to expand these in time to include the various
propers from other traditions.
We are grateful to the fine people at
Episcopalian.org who hosted this site
for the first few years of its existence. We are also
grateful to the work of the Prayer Book Societies of Australia,
Canada,
the
United Kingdom, and the
United States for their
promotion of the use and understanding of the Book of Common
Prayer, which retains the traditional Eucharistic lectionary, in
the worldwide Anglican Communion.
