Daily Office Lectionary (1928 BCP)
Daily Office Lectionary (1928 BCP) is the table that appoints the biblical lessons for Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer in the original American Book of Common Prayer of 1928. It gives a First Lesson from the Old Testament and a Second Lesson from the New Testament for each office, normally four readings each day. It is organized around the Christian year, with separate provision for fixed holy days. This Office lectionary is distinct from the Epistles and Gospels printed for Holy Communion.
The phrase 1928 BCP lectionary needs qualification. The Standard Book contained the table adopted in 1928. General Convention adopted a replacement Office lectionary in 1943, and editions printed from 1945 commonly contain that later table. The Society of Archbishop Justus therefore distinguishes the lectionary used from 1928 through 1944 from the one used from 1945 through 1978.[1] This article describes the original 1928 table and notes the later revision explicitly.
Governing rule
The front matter of the Standard Book states both the basic Old Testament–New Testament pattern and the relation between the movable Christian year and fixed holy days:
The Old Testament is appointed for the First Lessons, and the New Testament for the Second Lessons, at Morning and Evening Prayer throughout the Year. The Lessons to be read every day are to be found in the following Table of Lessons for the Christian Year; except only those for the Immovable Holy Days, the Proper Lessons for all which days are to be found in the Table of Proper Lessons.
The table has four columns after the day: Morning First Lesson, Morning Second Lesson, Evening First Lesson, and Evening Second Lesson. The opening of Advent illustrates its method. The First Sunday receives lessons selected for the season, while the following weekdays begin extended sequences in Genesis and Mark at Morning Prayer and 1 Kings and Revelation at Evening Prayer:
First Sunday in Advent: Morning—Isaiah 55; Luke 1:57–end. Evening—Isaiah 60:1–11, 18–end; John 1:15–28.
Monday: Morning—Genesis 1:1–2:3; Mark 1:1–20. Evening—1 Kings 11:1–13; Revelation 4.
Tuesday: Morning—Genesis 2:4–14; Mark 1:21–end. Evening—1 Kings 11:14–25; Revelation 5.
The arrangement is ordered but not mechanically inflexible. If only one Office is held on a Sunday or holy day, its minister may use either the morning or evening lessons. At Sunday Evening Prayer a weekday Gospel may replace the appointed Second Lesson; on an ordinary weekday, lessons from another day in the same week may be substituted. For specially appointed fasts, thanksgivings, ecclesiastical conventions, charitable collections, and other special occasions, the minister may appoint suitable lessons.[4] These permissions preserve the table as the norm while allowing pastoral adaptation within stated bounds.
The lessons within Morning and Evening Prayer
The lectionary is not a freestanding Bible-reading plan. Its readings occupy fixed places within the two Offices. In Morning Prayer the First Lesson follows the Venite and appointed psalmody. The rubric also requires the minister to announce and conclude each lesson:
Then shall be read the First Lesson, according to the Table or Calendar. And Note, That before every Lesson, the Minister shall say, Here beginneth such a Chapter [or Verse of such a Chapter] of such a Book; and after every Lesson, Here endeth the First [or the Second] Lesson.
A canticle answers the First Lesson; then the New Testament lesson is read and followed by another canticle. The second rubric makes the canonical division explicit:
Then shall be read in like manner, the Second Lesson, taken out of the New Testament, according to the Table or Calendar.
Evening Prayer uses the same two-lesson structure, with the Magnificat or another appointed canticle after the First Lesson and the Nunc Dimittis or another appointed canticle after the New Testament lesson. The 1928 book also permits one Evening Prayer lesson to be omitted at the minister’s discretion, provided the lesson read is followed by an Evening Canticle:
But, Note, That the Minister, at his discretion, may omit one of the Lessons in Evening Prayer, the Lesson read being followed by one of the Evening Canticles.
Thus the sequence is theological as well as practical: psalmody prepares for hearing, Scripture is heard corporately, and the Church answers Scripture with biblical or ancient canticles before confessing the Creed and praying.
Scriptural and doctrinal purpose
Public reading is itself an apostolic pastoral charge. Saint Paul directs Timothy:
Till I come, give attendance to reading, to exhortation, to doctrine.
The lectionary’s first purpose is therefore not to provide material for private selection or a sermon theme, but to ensure the repeated public hearing of Scripture. Jesus’ own synagogue practice joins reading, interpretation, and fulfilment: he stands to read Isaiah, declares that the Scripture is fulfilled, and directs his hearers toward himself.[9] In the Daily Office, the Old and New Testaments are likewise heard within Christian prayer and answered by canticles centred on the Triune God and the saving work of Christ.
The original Prayer Book preface explains why extensive vernacular Scripture belongs at the heart of common prayer:
And further, that the people (by daily hearing of holy Scripture read in the Church) should continually profit more and more in the knowledge of God, and be the more inflamed with the love of his true religion.
This liturgical aim accords with Article VI. The lectionary does not create revelation or place the Church above it; it orders the Church’s corporate reception of the canonical word:
Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation: so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it should be believed as an article of the Faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation.
The original table also appoints lessons from the books traditionally called the Apocrypha. Article VI distinguishes those books from the canonical Scriptures while permitting their ecclesiastical reading “for example of life and instruction of manners.” The lectionary’s use of Ecclesiasticus, Wisdom, Baruch, and 2 Esdras should be understood within that stated Anglican distinction, not as an assertion that they prove doctrine.[12]
Anglican interpretation
Writing in the year after the American Prayer Book’s adoption, Edward W. Averill distinguished the Office table from the other appointed readings and stressed that lectionary change did not necessarily amount to revision of the whole Prayer Book:
The table in the Prayer Book appointing the Lessons is called the “Lectionary” and is changed from time to time, without being regarded as a revision of the Prayer Book itself. There are three tables of Lessons: 1. For all Sundays and week days in the Church Year. 2. For all Holy Days not included in the first list. 3. For special occasions.
John Wallace Suter and Charles Morris Addison describe the liturgical logic of placing lessons between canticles. Hearing and praise are not rival elements; knowledge of God received in Scripture becomes the material of worship:
But the more we know of God, the more we shall be moved to praise him. The service of Matins had a lesson consisting of three or nine short passages, and Lauds and Prime had a short chapter and these were each followed by a burst of praise.
Conrad A. M. Stewart gives the four daily lessons a deliberately devotional interpretation rather than treating them as entries to be completed:
“Two letters from Heaven” is what Canon Liddon called the Lessons in Church. That means four letters from Heaven every single day of the year. Multiply the days of the year (365) by four and you get 1,460 letters from Heaven appointed to be read in church at Morning and Evening Prayer every year.
Stewart’s image should not obscure the human authorship, literary form, or historical setting of each biblical book. Its value is pastoral: the appointed lesson is received as God’s word addressed to the assembled Church, not as a disposable interval between musical portions of the service. Reader and congregation should therefore prepare, attend, and allow the following canticle to become a response to what has been heard.
The 1943 revision and later printings
The Standing Liturgical Commission’s 1943 report explicitly identified what it retained from the 1928 scheme. Its summary is also a reliable interpretation of the original table:
Certain fundamental principles of the Lectionary of 1928 have been retained. The Christian Year remains as the basis. The Sunday Lessons have been assigned topically, to bring out the teaching of the day as set forth in the liturgical Epistles and Gospels. … The weekday series is topical only in the vicinity of the great Festivals: otherwise, the books of the Bible are apportioned in course to those seasons of the year which best accommodate their length, and to which their general tone and content are most appropriate.
The report also criticized the 1928 Sunday provision as too narrow, increased alternatives, coordinated psalms with paired lessons, and shortened the average lesson from eighteen verses in the 1928 table to approximately thirteen and one-half in the proposed table.[17] General Convention then acted:
Resolved, The House of Deputies concurring, that the Tables of Psalms and Lessons, herewith presented by the Liturgical Commission, be adopted as the Official Lectionary of the Protestant Episcopal Church, and the standard for Annual Calendars.
For historical study or deliberate use of the original system, the title page or front matter of a printed book should therefore be checked rather than assuming that every volume bearing “1928” contains the 1928 table. For ordinary use, begin with the applicable week of the Christian year, select Morning or Evening Prayer, and read across the First and Second Lesson columns; then check the separate fixed-holy-day table when a listed feast occurs.
See Also
- Daily Office (1928 BCP)
- Morning Prayer (1928 BCP)
- Evening Prayer (1928 BCP)
- First Lesson in Morning Prayer (1928 BCP)
- Church Calendar (1928 BCP)
- Articles of Religion (1928 BCP)
References
- ↑ Society of Archbishop Justus, “The 1928 U.S. Book of Common Prayer,” editorial introduction and lectionary index, 1928 and 1945 lectionaries.
- ↑ Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, The Book of Common Prayer, Standard Book adopted in 1928 and printed for the Commission, “The Order How the Rest of the Holy Scripture Is Appointed to Be Read,” p. x, followed by “A Table of Lessons for the Christian Year,” pp. xi–xxix, original 1928 tables.
- ↑ Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, The Book of Common Prayer, Standard Book adopted in 1928 and printed for the Commission, “A Table of Lessons for the Christian Year,” First Sunday in Advent and following weekdays, p. xi, original 1928 tables. Biblical book names and the word “end” have been expanded from the table’s abbreviations without changing the appointments.
- ↑ Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, The Book of Common Prayer, Standard Book adopted in 1928 and printed for the Commission, “The Order How the Rest of the Holy Scripture Is Appointed to Be Read,” p. x, original 1928 tables.
- ↑ Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, The Book of Common Prayer, Standard Book adopted in 1928 and printed for the Commission, “The Order for Daily Morning Prayer,” p. 11, Society of Archbishop Justus transcription; checked against the Standard Book facsimile. Local comparison source:
sources/justus1928/MP.htm, lines 377–381. - ↑ Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, The Book of Common Prayer, Standard Book adopted in 1928 and printed for the Commission, “The Order for Daily Morning Prayer,” p. 20, Society of Archbishop Justus transcription; checked against the Standard Book facsimile. Local comparison source:
sources/justus1928/MP.htm, lines 533–534. - ↑ Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, The Book of Common Prayer, Standard Book adopted in 1928 and printed for the Commission, “The Order for Daily Evening Prayer,” p. 25, Society of Archbishop Justus transcription; checked against the Standard Book facsimile. Local comparison source:
sources/justus1928/EP.htm, lines 295–297. - ↑ The Holy Bible, Authorized Version, 1 Timothy 4:13, BibleGateway text.
- ↑ The Holy Bible, Authorized Version, Luke 4:16–21, BibleGateway text.
- ↑ Church of England, The Book of the Common Prayer and Administration of the Sacraments, Edward Whitchurch, 1549, “A Preface,” in the Anglican Church in North America’s traditional-language edition, “The Preface of the Book of Common Prayer (1549)”.
- ↑ Church of England, The Thirty-nine Articles of Religion, 1571, Article VI, “Of the Sufficiency of the Holy Scriptures for Salvation,” official Church of England text. The American 1928 Prayer Book prints the Articles beginning on p. 603.
- ↑ Church of England, The Thirty-nine Articles of Religion, Article VI, official Church of England text.
- ↑ Edward W. Averill, Talks on the Prayer Book (Fond du Lac, Wisconsin: The Parish Press, 1929), chapter III, “The Daily Offices and Litany,” pp. 21–22, Project Canterbury transcription.
- ↑ John Wallace Suter and Charles Morris Addison, The People’s Book of Worship: A Study of the Book of Common Prayer (New York: Macmillan, 1919), chapter V, “Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer,” section II, Project Canterbury transcription.
- ↑ Conrad A. M. Stewart, How to Make Mattins and Evensong Real: Some Practical Suggestions, Little Books on Religion no. 40 (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1926), section “The Lessons,” Project Canterbury transcription.
- ↑ Standing Liturgical Commission of the Protestant Episcopal Church, “Report of the Standing Liturgical Commission,” in Journal of the General Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, Held in Cleveland, Ohio, October 2–11, 1943 (Hammond, Indiana: W. B. Conkey Company, printed for the Convention, 1943), Appendix XVIII, pp. 404–405, Archives of the Episcopal Church scan.
- ↑ Standing Liturgical Commission, “Report,” Journal of the General Convention (1943), Appendix XVIII, pp. 404–407, Archives of the Episcopal Church scan.
- ↑ Journal of the General Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, Held in Cleveland, Ohio, October 2–11, 1943 (Hammond, Indiana: W. B. Conkey Company, printed for the Convention, 1943), “Liturgical Commission—Report on Lectionary—Approved,” pp. 245–246; see also Appendix XVIII, p. 434, Archives of the Episcopal Church scan.