The Daily Office Lectionary: A Rookie Anglican Guide
When you first encounter the Anglican tradition, one thing quickly becomes evident: we are a people of the Bible—and we read it widely. Besides our liturgy, which is, most often, directly derived or paraphrased from Scripture, our Eucharist services feature up to four substantial Scripture readings. Yet we don’t reserve this Bible reading for Sunday mornings. Instead, our Daily Offices of Morning and Evening Prayer feature even more substantial portions of Scripture. This practice saturates us in the Word of God every day.
The morning and evening offices each feature a reading from the Psalms. There is also one from the Old Testament (or occasionally the Apocrypha) and one from the New Testament each day. But where do we get these readings? A lectionary. A lectionary is, in simple terms, a Bible reading plan. It tells you which scripture passages to read on specific days. In addition, the Daily Office Lectionary guides you through the scriptures each morning and evening of the year.
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The Heart of the Lectionary
The two lectionaries in the Book of Common Prayer reflect Archbishop Thomas Cranmer’s goal of bringing the Bible to the people. In his preface to the 1549 Prayer Book, he wrote of his hope:
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.
Thomas Cranmer, Preface, The Book of Common Prayer (1549)
Because he knew the life-changing value of people knowing the Scriptures, he created not one but two lectionaries for church use. First, the Sunday and Holy Days Lectionary is used for Sunday services of Holy Communion, as well as for Holy Communion on other special days throughout the Church Year. These readings, thematically, guide parishioners through the Church Year’s gospel arc. Second, the Daily Office Lectionary is used for the Daily Office services of Morning and Evening Prayer. In fact, Cranmer intended this lectionary to take parishioners through the vast majority of the Bible each year.
Cranmer’s goal was simple. As Colin Buchanan writes:
On behalf of the Church of England, Cranmer was determined that the church read through whole books of the Bible in sequence, and from the 1549 Book of Common Prayer onward, he provided at Morning and Evening Prayer for this to be done on a daily basis through the calendar year, without distinction of Sundays… For communion, he retained the somewhat arbitrary and excerptive pre-Reformation pattern of unconnected Epistle and Gospel readings.
Colin Buchanan, Historical Dictionary of Anglicanism, 374-375
Versions of the Daily Office Lectionary
There have been many formulations of the Daily Office Lectionary over the years. The history of these coincides with the history of the Book of Common Prayer itself. For simplicity, we’ll highlight the features of three of the editions most used by our readers: the 1662 Book of Common Prayer: International Edition, the Episcopal Church USA’s 1979 Book of Common Prayer, and the Anglican Church in North America’s 2019 Book of Common Prayer. Our Anglican Compass Daily Office Booklet is based on the last of these.
1662 Book of Common Prayer: International Edition
The 1662 Prayer Book is the classic Prayer Book still held as authoritative across the Anglican world. Its lectionary finds its roots, with minor changes, in Cranmer’s originals from the 1549 and 1552 Prayer Books. It follows the same philosophy. The 1662 BCP Daily Office Lectionary is a one-year cycle of readings. It is based on the civil calendar, not the liturgical calendar. Furthermore, it takes you through a ton of Scripture. You can access the 1662 BCP International Edition’s Daily Office Lectionary here.
1979 Episcopal Book of Common Prayer
The 1979 BCP Daily Office Lectionary is a two-year cycle of readings, Year One and Year Two. It is based on the liturgical year, not the civil calendar year. Although it sometimes works its way through the books of the Bible sequentially, it also follows the church calendar thematically. The benefit is that these readings immerse you in the gospel narrative of each church season. The downside of this is that you skip some significant portions of Scripture. As a result, you don’t make it through most of the Bible in a year. You can access the 1979 BCP Daily Office Lectionary here.
2019 ACNA Book of Common Prayer
Like Cranmer’s original, the ACNA Daily Office Lectionary is a one-year cycle of readings, but it can be adapted for use as a two-year lectionary. Its readings are pretty long. This isn’t a bad thing, of course, though they can cause difficulties in some settings. For example, they work much better when doing the Daily Office on your own than when doing it with a large group. For this reason, it gives options for shortening longer passages. In another return to the original, the 2019 lectionary is based on the civil calendar year rather than the liturgical year. However, it retains certain traditions, such as reading the book of Revelation during Advent.
- Sequentially read books of the Bible (you read your way through a book of the Bible before moving on to the next one, instead of skipping around thematically). In doing so, it takes you through a ton of Scripture, almost the entire Bible, in a single year, plus selections from the Apocrypha.
- Following the one-year cycle, you’ll go through the gospels and Acts twice. You will do the same with most of the epistles. In addition, you’ll get through almost the entire Old Testament yearly. Exceptions include select passages in Leviticus, Numbers, Joshua, Judges, Ezra, Nehemiah, Ezekiel, and most of 1-2 Chronicles. Omitted passages are duplicates (e.g., 1-2 Chronicles) or extremely sparse when it comes to edification in the context of public reading (e.g., the land allotments in Joshua).
Anglican Compass is Here to Help with the Lectionary
We know this is a lot to absorb. However, we’re here to help. You can sign up for our Daily Office Booklet to have a simplified, printable booklet to guide you through Morning and Evening Prayer every day, including a table of readings from the Daily Office Lectionary. You can also check out DailyOffice2019.com, sponsored by Anglican House Publishing, for an online version of the Daily Office. It will queue up each day’s readings for you. Begin and end your day with Scripture reading and prayer, and see how God uses it to transform you more and more into the likeness of Jesus Christ.
Romans 12:12
Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer.
This post was updated by Joshua Steele on June 11, 2020, and by Jacob Davis on January 9, 2024.
Photo by GrabillCreative for Getty Images, courtesy of Canva.
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