On this page I’m collecting links and files which are useful to me
for various reasons. Maybe they’ll be useful to you too.
Each resource is summarized, either in my own words or with a ‘money
quote’ from the article itself, after the link. I’ve tried to
de-emphasize traditionalist perspectives by moving them further down
this list. It’s most interesting, and hopeful, when people who are
otherwise on board with the 20th century liturgical renewals recover the
classic lectionary for themselves!
‘A
Lectionary and Additional Collects for Holy Communion (Book of
Common Prayer)’ in Common Worship (Church of
England)
Fully authorized lectionary providing an additional Old Testament
lesson and gradual psalm for every feast and fast in the 1662
lectionary, and full propers for some additional feasts. These, or the
original 1662 lectionary, can be used at Common Worship
services.
The SPCK publishes this in worked-out form annually, in the same
volume as their lectionary almanac of the RCL readings.
‘Why
the RCL is killing churches, and what you can do about it’, Matthew
S. C. Oliver, 1 July 2016, Covenant.
‘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’, Drew Nathaniel Keane, 22 December
2017, Covenant.
N.B. The U.S. 1928 lectionary, essentially the same as the 1662
lectionary.
‘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’, Richard Peers,
3 January 2019, Quodcumque: Serious Christianity.
Modern pedagogical techniques emphasize repetition, which the current
three-year Sunday lectionary (especially with the addition of the
weekday lectionary) does not provide at all; proposes five solutions, of
which only the fifth, adoption of the historic one-year lectionary, is
really practical.
‘Vatican
II and the Destruction of the Western Liturgy’, Derek Olsen,
31 March 2007, St Bede Productions.
‘It wasn’t the vernacular that did it in but the three year
lectionary … Formerly the Mass and Office were on a common one-year
calendar. No longer.’
‘Reading
the Bible as a Church’, Gavin Dunbar, 20 October 2013,
Anglican Way Magazine.
‘Despite the reverence for the ancient liturgy professed by
contemporary liturgists, the new Anglican liturgies scrap an
actual ancient lectionary that has been in continuous use since
late antiquity for an entirely modern construct, in which the doctrinal
coherence of each Sunday’s proclamation is much diminished, or even
abandoned altogether.’
‘Save the
lectionary, save the world’, Andrew Sabisky, 2 June 2018,
Excvbitor.
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].’
‘Confessions
of a one year lectionary convert’, Mark Surburg, 27 January 2014,
Surburg’s Blog.
N.B. Of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, very similar to the 1662
lectionary.
The Church of England’s 1922 Revised Table of Lessons in CSV
format: proper of time;
proper of saints.
This possibly contains errors; it has not been extensively checked. I
would appreciate error reports. It should be machine-readable, so you
could use this to build a 1922 lectionary version of a daily office app,
for instance.
The Church of England’s 1961 Table of Lessons in CSV format,
based on the above: proper
of time; proper of
saints.
This has been slightly better checked than the previous. The portions
which are identical, or very similar to, the 1922 lectionary should be
entirely correct; the rest might contain a few more errors.
The rules for Year I and Year II are identical to most current
two-year lectionaries: when Advent Sunday falls in an even-numbered
year, Year I is used; when it falls in an odd-numbered year, Year II is
used. An easier way to remember is that the parity of the lectionary
year used is the same as the parity of the calendar year which makes up
the larger part of the ecclesiastical year. On the days which, in my CSV
table, have lessons appointed for Year I but not Year II, there are no
separate lessons appointed for both years and the same lessons are used
every year. (This includes all but one of the weekdays of the year, and
some of the major Sundays and holy-days as well.)
Note an additional caveat with this lectionary: the Old Testament
lessons for the 26th Sunday after Trinity are always used beginning on
the Monday before the Sunday Next before Advent.
The 1961 lectionary also gave some additional lessons for certain
purposes (such as Remembrance Sunday and Corpus Christi, which,
following the appendix to the 1928 prayer book (still in wide use at the
time), was allowed to be celebrated as ‘Thanksgiving for the Institution
of Holy Communion’ at any time of year). Additionally, canonical
alternatives were provided for the apocryphal lessons appointed in the
lectionary for the Sundays from the 21st Sunday after Trinity onwards.
Both are reproduced in
non-machine-readable format here.
Note that I’m not sure of the authorization status of this
lectionary. The consensus seems to be that it no longer enjoys direct
authorization under Canon B2, but it’s not clear when explicit
authorization was withdrawn. It appears to have been removed from the
SPCK almanac beginning with the 1981–2 ecclesiastical year (1980–1
almanac with it vs 1981–2
apparently without). But it is almost certainly still legal, as a
variation of the 1922 lectionary above, under Canon B5 (note e.g. that
the definition of ‘form of service’ used in the canons explicitly
includes ‘the lessons designated in any Table of Lessons’). This is the
justification used by John Hunwicke to
continue publishing the 1961 lessons in his own annual almanac. We may
have confirmation of this from the House of Bishops in their resolution
of 28 January 1988, confirming all that all forms of service authorized
since 1965 were, at the time, allowed under Canon B5. Therefore if at
any time after 1965 General Synod gave an explicit re-authorization to
this lectionary (for example, to bring its authorization status into
line with the alternative services measures passed between 1965 and
1974), the 1961 lectionary has authority from the House of Bishops to
continue in use.