Fr Matthew Reese
Dear Friends,
There’s been so much lovely theological reflection in Daily Bread the last week, that I’m loath to step out of it. Especially this morning with the intermingled beauty and violence of Psalm 78:
“He rained down manna upon them to eat *
and gave them grain from heaven.
So mortals ate the bread of angels; *
he provided for them food enough.” (vv. 24–25)
But even for those of us who consider ourselves old-hat at the cycle of daily prayer, we might still gain from considering what exactly we are reading and praying…
Daily Bread follows something called the Daily Office Lectionary, and our Daily Office is itself a distillation, condensing the eight “canonical hours”––those medieval services still kept in many monastic churches––into just two. Truly, a feat of editorial prowess!
Until the current prayerbook (1979), we would’ve read [almost] the entirety of Scripture in a single year, and the whole Psalter every month. Now, in a two-year cycle, we have a little more time to breathe.
But what if it’s a saint’s day or commemoration?
Ah, well then, we turn to the appointed lessons in Lesser Feasts and Fasts. What if I come to a weekday Eucharist at Saint Philip’s? Don’t worry, that’s a third lectionary that we share with most other Anglicans and the Roman Catholics.
Then what on earth do we read on Sunday?
Now that’s the Revised Common Lectionary, a three-year cycle, based on the 1969 Roman Catholic one, used by most Mainline Protestants. If you weren’t confused enough, even this has a Track I and a Track II for the Old Testament lesson!
Four continuous patterns of prayer, interwoven, sometimes speaking against one another, sometimes aligning in the most beautiful and unexpected ways. So many opportunities to be spiritually changed. So many opportunities to read the wrong line in a 6-point-font chart and happily declaim a lesson from two weeks hence, or even another year.
Many a seminarian has done this. Many a priest and bishop, too.
It’s good to try to follow it faithfully, if for no other reason than continuity of narrative. And there are resources, like this wonderful one from the Church’s Forward Movement to aid us in our way.
But all these are merely tools. God is with us any time we stop to read His holy Word.
It doesn’t matter if it’s one of the lessons for the day or just the page we’ve opened up to. Truly, this is manna from heaven. So even if it’s only a verse or two, let us never cease to feast upon the Word. God has given us food enough.
—Fr Matthew
