The Lectionary and the Cycles

The ordered systems by which the Orthodox Church reads through her Scriptures in worship: the annual Gospel and Epistle (Apostolos) cycles that carry the faithful through the New Testament, and the Old Testament readings — the paremias — appointed at Vespers of feasts and through Great Lent. The lectionary is not a random selection but a theology in the shape of a calendar.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox

What a Lectionary Is

A lectionary is the ordered system that appoints which passages of Scripture are read at which services across the year. The Orthodox Church inherited and developed the Byzantine lectionary, and its logic is theological as well as practical: the readings are arranged so that the Church moves through the New Testament in the course of the year, and so that the Scriptures illumine and are illumined by the feasts they accompany. The reading of Scripture in worship is thus governed not by the private choice of a preacher but by the calendar of the Church, which is itself an ordered proclamation of the mystery of Christ (Ware, The Orthodox Church, Penguin, 1993; Georges Barrois, Scripture Readings in Orthodox Worship, SVS Press, 1977; see Holy Scripture in Orthodox Theology).

Two liturgical books carry the New Testament lectionary. The Evangelion (Gospel book) contains the four Gospels divided and marked for liturgical reading; the Apostolos (or Praxapostolos) contains Acts and the Epistles similarly arranged. In practice the readings are counted in numbered pericopes: the “such-and-such reading” (zachalo in Slavonic usage) appointed for each day.

The Gospel Cycle

The annual Gospel cycle begins not on 1 September (the start of the Church’s civil year) but at Pascha, the center from which the whole calendar radiates. Its ordering follows the four evangelists in a deliberate sequence:

From Pascha to Pentecost, the Church reads the Gospel of John — the most theological Gospel, fitting for the paschal season of the Resurrection and the outpouring of the Spirit. The paschal Liturgy itself opens with John 1:1, “In the beginning was the Word.”
From the Monday after Pentecost, the reading turns to Matthew, read through the weeks of summer.
After the Elevation of the Cross (14 September) and the associated “Lukan jump,” the reading turns to Luke for the autumn and winter weeks.
Mark is read on the weekdays of the later weeks and through much of the pre-Lenten and Lenten weekday cycle, its material distributed to fill out the year.

This annual course carries the faithful through the Gospels each year, with the great feasts supplying their own appointed Gospels (Ware, The Orthodox Church, 1993; the ordering is set out in the Typikon and the Gospel lectionary; John Breck, Scripture in Tradition, SVS Press, 2001, on the liturgical reading of the Gospels). The Church thereby hears the whole gospel narrative annually, anchored to the paschal mystery at its heart.

The Epistle (Apostolos) Cycle

Parallel to the Gospel cycle runs the reading of the Apostolos — Acts and the Epistles. Acts is read through the paschal season from Pascha to Pentecost, alongside John: the Church hears the story of the young Church and the coming of the Spirit in the fifty days of the Resurrection. After Pentecost the Epistles are read in course — the Pauline corpus principally, together with the Catholic Epistles — distributed across the weeks of the year so that the apostolic letters are heard alongside the Gospels day by day (Barrois, Scripture Readings in Orthodox Worship, 1977; the Apostolos lectionary). At the Divine Liturgy the Epistle is read before the Gospel, preceded by its prokeimenon (a psalm refrain) and followed by the Alleluia verses — the reading framed, as always, by the Psalter.

The Apocalypse: The Book Not Read

One New Testament book is absent from all of this. The Revelation (Apocalypse) of St. John has no place in the Byzantine lectionary and is never appointed at the services, though it is fully canonical (Hopko, The Orthodox Faith, vol. 1, “The Book of Revelation,” OCA, 1981; see The Formation of the Canon). This reflects its long-disputed status in the East, where it was among the last books to gain settled acceptance. A partial exception is the Athonite monastic custom of reading the Apocalypse outside the liturgical cycle, for example during the vigil of Holy Saturday — a devotional reading, not a lectionary appointment. The case is a vivid illustration of the close Orthodox bond between canonicity and liturgical use: a book received as inspired Scripture can nonetheless be excluded from public reading.

The Old Testament Paremias

The Old Testament has no continuous course-reading in the ordinary Byzantine services; instead it is read in appointed selections called paremias (Greek paroimia, “reading, lesson”), chanted chiefly at Vespers of feasts and through Great Lent. The paremias are chosen for their bearing on the day — almost always typologically (see Typology, the Exodus, and Pascha). Thus the feasts of the Theotokos draw readings on Jacob’s ladder (Genesis 28), the shut gate of the sanctuary (Ezekiel 44), and Wisdom building her house (Proverbs 9); the feast of the Cross draws Moses and the bronze serpent and the tree that sweetened the waters. The Old Testament book that gathered these appointed readings was the Prophetologion (Profitologion), the Byzantine Old Testament lectionary book, in use from the early medieval period until the readings were later redistributed into the festal Menaion and the Triodion (Pentiuc, The Old Testament in Eastern Orthodox Tradition, Oxford, 2014, on the Prophetologion; James Miller, “The Prophetologion: The Old Testament of Byzantine Christianity,” in The Old Testament in Byzantium, ed. Magdalino and Nelson, Dumbarton Oaks, 2010).

Two seasons concentrate the Old Testament. In Great Lent, the weekday Vespers and Hours read continuously through Genesis, Proverbs, and Isaiah (Genesis and Proverbs at Vespers, Isaiah at the Sixth Hour) — the Church reading the story of creation and fall, the school of wisdom, and the great prophecy of the Servant as she journeys toward Pascha. And at the Vesperal Liturgy of Holy Saturday, the Church reads fifteen Old Testament paremias recounting the whole economy of salvation — creation, the Passover, the crossing of the Red Sea, Jonah, the three youths in the furnace — as the types now fulfilled in the death and resurrection of Christ, the readings that anciently accompanied the baptism of the catechumens (Barrois, Scripture Readings in Orthodox Worship, 1977; Pentiuc, The Old Testament in Eastern Orthodox Tradition, 2014).

The Lectionary as Theology

The upshot is that the Orthodox lectionary is itself a form of biblical interpretation — a theology in the shape of a calendar. By reading John at Pascha, Acts in the fifty days, the Exodus paremias at the paschal vigil, and Genesis-Proverbs-Isaiah through Lent, the Church teaches, without a word of commentary, how the Scriptures are to be read: christologically, typologically, and toward the paschal mystery (Breck, Scripture in Tradition, 2001; Pentiuc, The Old Testament in Eastern Orthodox Tradition, 2014). The selection and placement of the readings embody the same convictions the Fathers argue in their homilies — that Christ is the key, that the Old Testament prefigures the New, that Scripture is rightly heard within the worshiping Church. The lectionary is the Church’s exegesis made audible.

References

Barrois, Georges. Scripture Readings in Orthodox Worship. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1977. (The Gospel, Apostolos, and Old Testament lectionaries; the Lenten and Holy Saturday readings.)
Pentiuc, Eugen J. The Old Testament in Eastern Orthodox Tradition. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014. (The Prophetologion; the paremias; the Old Testament in Byzantine worship.)
Miller, James. “The Prophetologion: The Old Testament of Byzantine Christianity.” In The Old Testament in Byzantium, ed. Paul Magdalino and Robert Nelson. Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 2010.
Ware, Kallistos (Timothy). The Orthodox Church. New ed. London: Penguin, 1993. (“The Bible”; the Gospel cycle.)
Hopko, Thomas. The Orthodox Faith, vol. 1: Doctrine and Scripture. New York: OCA, 1981. (“The Book of Revelation”; its absence from the lectionary.)
Breck, John. Scripture in Tradition. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2001. (The lectionary as interpretation.)