New liturgical resource

WHEN I was a child, I learned Old Testament stories in Sunday school (often told using felt board figures) and in illustrated Bible story books at home. But three Sundays each month I also heard lessons f-rom the Old Testament read aloud in the main morning service of my parish church.

Posted Date : 2025-03-04 18:35:00

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Description: Benjamin von Bredow with his wife Katy and their daughters Theodora and baby Cecilia.

By Sue Careless

WHEN I was a child, I learned Old Testament stories in Sunday school (often told using felt board figures) and in illustrated Bible story books at home. But three Sundays each month I also heard lessons f-rom the Old Testament read aloud in the main morning service of my parish church.

Holy Communion according to the Book of Common Prayer was only held on the first Sunday of the month, unless there was a special holy day such as Easter. At the Lord’s Supper we pretty well only heard readings f-rom the New Testament. The other Sundays were services of Morning Prayer with readings of both the Old and New Testament lessons. So, our congregation gained some familiarity with the Old Testament.

(There was always a weekly said Eucharist but held at such an early hour that only a few parishioners attended it.)

Then along came the practice of weekly Communion at the main morning service. In parishes that continued to use the BCP, the Old Testament got short shrift at this service, except of course for the Psalms. Isaiah would be heard during Advent but not much otherwise. While the BCP Eucharistic Lectionary is undoubtedly a precious gift f-rom the ancient church, there still seemed to be a longing for some Old Testament passages as well at the main Sunday service.     

In 1994, many Roman Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran and Presbyterian churches adopted the 3-year Revised Common Lectionary, which did include Old Testament lessons, but for those parishes still using the BCP Eucharistic Lectionary, there were virtually none.

The Prayer Book Society of Canada (PBSC) sensed this need and has recently completed a project compiling a set of optional Old Testament readings to complement the traditional Epistle and Gospel readings at the BCP service of Holy Communion.

Under project coordinator Rev. Benjamin von Bredow, the working group met for three years and produced far more than a list of biblical citations. The Old Testament passages are not lengthy, often no more than a dozen verses, but they tie in remarkably well thematically with the Collect, Epistle and Gospel appointed for the day.

Last year the PBSC published two lectern and study editions of the supplemented traditional lectionary, both of which can be ordered through Amazon: a Contemporary-Language Edition and a Traditional-Language Edition (the first drawing on the ESV and BAS Psalter, and the second using the KJV and BCP Psalter). Each sells for $33.62.

Alternatively, the Traditional-Language Edition can be downloaded as a pdf using a link on the PBSC website. (Because of copyright rules for the ESV, a pdf version of the Contemporary-Language Edition is not available.)

At the PBSC site there is also a free printable chart containing the citations for the lectionary, with a brief summary of the rationale for each of the Old Testament readings and Microsoft Word documents of the Introit and Gradual Psalms for use in parish bulletins.

The Preface to the lectern editions states:

“The primary rationale for developing the Old Testament series has been to facilitate parishes transitioning f-rom the Revised Common Lectionary to the one-year lectionary. Most contemporary parishioners have only or mostly known a liturgical environment dominated by the Revised Common Lectionary. For them, one of the most significant factors that makes the traditional lectionary a hard pill to swallow is that it does not include an Old Testament reading. The faithful expect to hear the Old Testament read and preached – and rightly so! Every Christian tradition has made space for the Old Testament, even if it has not been at the Eucharist.”

On their website the PBSC writes: “We hope that our print editions will find a home not only in the Anglican Church of Canada, but in other Anglican provinces and jurisdictions, since we all share a common heritage in the traditional, one-year lectionary of the Western church.”

This would seem to be the case. The Bishop of Central Florida has authorized five parishes to begin a three-year trial use of the PBSC Eucharistic Lectionary supplement. 

Rev. Matthew Perreault, originally f-rom Calgary but now Rector of St. Thomas Episcopal Church in Eustis, Florida, was the principal author of the proposal submitted to Bishop Justin Holcomb:

“One of the reasons we encouraged the Bishop to authorize this PBSC Lectionary supplement was that, compared to the other options we explored (five were presented to the bishop), it seemed the most pastorally sensitive and least disruptive to the congregation owing to its intended use as a transition in parishes used to the Revised Common Lectionary.”

For more information see: https://prayerbook.ca/ot-lections/   TAP

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