Three hundred years later, Charlemagne decided to standardize liturgical practices in his domain, and as part of this had his religious advisor Alcuin9 do a revision of the Comes Hieronymi.
What Alcuin basically did was take the Gregorian Sacramentary, the current standard in Rome, and introduce it to Charlemange's empire. This was a monumental step in church history, since it standardized worship in the Western Church and put everyone west of the Carpathians literally on the same page, at least for the festival part of the year.
And because he was seeking to shorten the service, Alcuin introduced two major changes in the lectionary. First, he eliminated the reading of the Old Testament lesson. Secondly, he shortened many of the epistle and Gospel readings. Where before a lesson could have been as long as two or three chapters, now it was usually a single account from a gospel or section from an epistle that dealt with a specific topic. There were probably a number of reasons for both these changes, but what is likely the main one was the decreased literacy of both people and clergy effected by the barbarian invasions.
The next major change to the lectionary would not come until the 13th century and the establishment of the last generally accepted major festival of the Church: Trinity Sunday. This festival soon came to dominate the second half of the church year, and with that came the establishment of assigned propers for the entire year. In itself this was not new; some places had actually established year-round propers as early as the 4th century.
But the High Middle Ages saw the strengthening of both monarchies and the papacy, both of which liked to have unified practice. The era of cuius regio eius lectio was over, and with the general adoption of the Sarum Missal at the end of the 13th century the liturgical practice of the Western Church, year round, was governed by the Historic lectionary. So well constructed and established was this practice that even during the upheaval of the Reformation it remained intact.
The Reformation never really asked the question "Should the lectionary be changed? Calvin took a somewhat more restrained approach, abolishing both church year and lectionary but substituting a lectio continua , since he saw homiletical value in having some sort of assigned reading. The Lutherans, true to form, only wished to abolish or reform those things which obscured Christ or promoted false doctrine. The lectionary did not fall into either of these categories, and thus was retained with only slight revision by the Lutherans: They added propers for Trinity 25 and 26, eschatological lessons meant to connect the end of life with the end of all things.
They also moved the commemoration of the Transfiguration from the fixed date of August 6 to the last Sunday after Epiphany, a fitting climax of the season which celebrates the manifestation of the glory and deity of Christ. This was not to say there was not criticism from the Lutherans. In a letter to his friend Nicholas Hausmann in Zwickau, Luther described the liturgical service in Wittenberg and commented about the readings:. After [the collect] the Epistle is read. Certainly the time has not yet come to attempt revision here, as nothing unevangelical is read, except that those parts from the Epistles of Paul in which faith is taught are read only rarely, while the exhortations to morality are most frequently read.
The Epistles seem to have been chosen by a singularly unlearned and superstitious advocate of works. But for the service those sections in which faith in Christ is taught should have been given preference. The latter were certainly considered more often in the Gospels by whoever it was who chose these lessons. In the meantime, the sermon in the vernacular will have to supply what is lacking. As critical as Luther's comments seem to be, they should be taken with a grain a salt.
Considering the times he was perhaps over-sensitive to anything which seemed to detract from Sola Gratia. Indeed, in the end we see that even Luther took himself with a grain of salt, since despite his comments Luther himself prescribed the use of the Historic lectionary in both the Formula Missae and Deutsche Messe ,12 and all Lutheran altar books continued in their use of it. Even the Augsburg Confession and the Apology testify to its official use in Lutheran congregations, when in speaking about tradition and the Church the Lutherans stated: "Many traditions are kept on our part, for they lead to good order in the Church, such as the Order of Lessons in the Mass [i.
It served as the basis for our postils and devotional books, our hymnody and church music, and even until the mid 20th century was the index for every Lutheran hymnal. To be sure, other lectionaries were prepared.
In the churches of the Prussian Union known as the Eisenach Conference produced a lectionary, popularized in the United States by Dr. Lenski and his notes on the series. The Synodical Conference produced a series which was adopted in The Scandinavian Lutheran Churches produced a three-year lectionary in The fact that the Historic lectionary has been in use over six hundred years is much to its credit.
It means that there are plenty of resources for it, including many written by the Lutheran Fathers. Six hundred years also means that there has been time to work out most of the bugs. Unlike other lectionary series except those based on the Historic series , the propers for the day always match up with the readings, enhancing the theme for the day, and the lessons within each season flow together to create a seasonal theme.
Indeed, of all the lectionaries the Historic is the most well-organized; there is even method in the seeming madness of the Trinity season. If repetitio mater studiorum est , then here is where you will find the most repetitio. This is especially an advantage in our era of decreased biblical literacy. At the same time, because it is a one year series, it uses a limited number of texts.
The Historic lectionary grew during times when it was common to have services on days like Easter Monday, which may also explain why some lessons are now omitted. In , only fifteen years after the production of The Lutheran Hymnal, Lutheran church bodies in the United States were seeking a revision of that book. In the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod resolved to appoint a commission which would work with other Lutheran church bodies to produce a new common hymnal, a contemporary heir to The Lutheran Hymnal.
These were distributed through the publication of a series entitled Contemporary Worship. Contemporary Worship 6 , produced in , dealt with the church year and calendar and introduced two new lectionaries. In this volume the commission wrote:.
This concern is not simply the product of change in society and church; it has deeper roots. It reflects a variety of influences in current theology, social-ethical involvements, developments in worship practice, and especially the influential biblical theology movement of recent decades. In discussing revision there had been some debate regarding the merits of going to a multi-year series, "on whether loyalty to our heritage, conformity with world Lutheranism generally, and reverence for the Western lectionary tradition should prevail, or whether agreement with our sister churches in America demanded a three-year series.
Thus in September of the ILCW simply followed suit, expressing its preference for a three-year series. In the ILCW published a revised one-year series, and two years later published their magnum opus , a new three-year series, patterned after the Roman Ordo.
The ILCW three-year series somewhat returned to the practice of lectio continua with the basic principle of assigning a synoptic gospel to each year. The Gospel of John is used in all three during the Sundays after Easter and also serves to supplement St. Mark in Year B. In an effort to re-introduce the reading of the Old Testament, a First Lesson, usually selected from the Old Testament, was assigned to each Sunday which was to coordinate with the Gospel reading.
The exception to this is the Sundays after Easter, where selections are chosen from Acts. Epistles were also assigned to each year to be read lectio continua , and thus no special effort was made to coordinate the Epistle with the Gospel selection. The committee also stated a "sensitivity to the hazards in certain texts e.
This series quickly became popular in Lutheran circles, evidenced by the fact that within fifteen years of its release Lutheran publishing houses were no longer producing worship materials based on the Historic Lectionary. Like most common resources, there are now actually several versions of the ILCW lectionary in print.
The Evangelical Lutheran Hymnary uses essentially the same version of the one found in Lutheran Worship. For the most part the variations in the different versions are minor, often focusing on the length of the reading e. Should we read all of St. John 9, or just selected verses? Upon publication of the lectionary in , the ILCW itself pointed out what is often cited as its greatest advantage: a larger selection of texts, thus exposing a congregation to a wider range of Scripture. This is based on the Christian hermeneutical principle, established by the time of Irenaeus, that the two Testaments constituted a unity.
This unity has usually been understood to mean that everything in the Old Testament has a double meaning. On the other hand it refers either by typology or by outright prediction, to Christ and the Church as the New Israel.
This is somewhat rectified in Ordinary Time, which we shall discuss below. The third reading also usually relates to the Gospel, though sometimes this relationship is less obvious than others.
On the face of it, this bit of catechesis is a good starting place to explore the Church Year. Within a decade many American Protestant churches had adopted their own version of the Roman lectionary, making slight modifications where it was seen necessary for their tradition. The was an encouraging sign of ecumenism among the Christians in North America, but also caused some issues.
As the various lectionary versions used by the many denominations all slightly differed, it made cooperation between church bodies difficult. It was quickly apparent that there was a need and strong desire for the standardization of Sunday lectionary readings in the North America.
Extensive portions of the NRSV may not be quoted without permission from the holder of copyright as stated above. Please contact us if you have questions. The art images and accompanying descriptions may be freely used for non-profit purposes by worship leaders, teachers, and others in the Church and educational communities. In short: you are free to use and to share the file for non-commercial purposes under the conditions that you appropriately attribute it, and that you distribute it only under a license compatible with this one.
For other use, please contact the Divinity Library Reference Staff with your request. Permission guidelines for publication projects using the RCL can be found here: Publication Permissions. Click on it, follow the instructions, and see if that resolves the difficulty. If not, try the next Each browser has its own settings for this feature. Click on it. The last option presented are small icons with the words "text document.
Click on one of the icons. Your computer will prompt you to save a file that contains all the scriptures. You can then print that directly or copy it and paste it into your word processor and print it from there. Is there a way to make the font size larger for printing? On the page you wish to print, look in the upper right hand corner of the page.
Click on the "printer" icon. The print box will offer four font sizes for printing. Is there a way to make the font size larger for reading online?
Yes, by using a Windows command: on your keyboard, hold down the control key and press the plus-equal sign key while you are holding down the control key. To make the font size smaller, hold down the control key and press the underline-dash key. How can I print particular passages instead of all of the passages?
When you are viewing the webpage with the passages for the week, locate the "printer" icon in the top right hand corner of the page. Click on the printer icon. You will have the option to uncheck the passages that you do not want to print. You can easily print each "season" there are seven for each year and are listed in the left column, using the "printer" icon at the top right hand corner of the page.
If you would like a Lectionary without any calendar dates, you can export the files as an Excel document and remove the calendar date field and then print as desired. Another alternative is to purchase a copy of the Lectionary, available in religious bookstores or on Amazon. Does the Revised Common Lectionary have a Facebook page? Yes, we have a very simple Facebook page that lists the readings for the week; they link to this main RCL website.
If you are interested in commenting or asking a question, you can use the "Contact Us" icon found at the top of every page on this website. Do you have any plans for developing iPhone or Android apps? At this time we do not have the expertise on our staff to develop such programming. We are instead actively developing a mobile-friendly site, so that users worldwide, regardless of their phone or tablet software or make, may be able to use our site.
We hope to have this available by Summer of Is there an electronic version of the Daily Lectionary for a personal computer? In the top right hand corner of the RCL website, you will find a search box with button text "Lections. Click on the appropriate passage from the list and that passage will appear in the search box. Click "go. Is there a way to see all of the lections in Bible-book order? Yes; simply click on the book icon found at the top right-hand corner of the page.
Is there a way to download the art graphic at the top of the page? We hope to provide an option for adding the art graphic to the printable page, but at this time, the only option is to copy the graphic and paste it into a word-processing document and then print it.
Could you provide more illustrations in strong black and white that would print well? There is clearly a strong need for quality, no-cost illustrations that work well for bulletins, handouts, etc. We plan to develop a downloadable format that includes the artwork and the scripture passages on the same page. Can I contribute an artwork -- a prayer -- a reflection -- to the website? We do not yet have a process by which users can automatically add content, primarily because the Vanderbilt Divinity Library has editorial control over the content.
We are open to ways that we can work with contributors, within this limitation. What are the copyright restrictions for the art images? We encourage churches and other educational communities to make use of the art images. The Vanderbilt ACT website itself should also be attributed. Could you give an example of how to credit an art image from the Lectionary website? This information is provided for easy copying near the bottom of every record in the Art in the Christian Tradition database.
Here is an example: "Craig W. Hartman architect ; NeitherFanboy photographer. Could you make the art images into a slideshow, say, for each liturgical season? We now have slideshows available in PDF and PowerPoint format available for use, free to use in any non-commercial setting. The texts of the Revised Common Lectionary Prayers have been made possible with the cooperation of the Consultation on Common Texts, the ecumenical authoring body for the Revised Common Lectionary, as well as the initiating body for the prayers.
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