Liturgical and Sanctoral Calendars
Liturgical Calendar
The Orthodox-Catholic Church of America follows The Revised Common Lectionary and hence, the "western" liturgical calendar for the ecclesial year.
What is the lectionary?
The Revised Common Lectionary was prepared by the group The Consultation on Common Texts. It includes persons from a wide range of church families: The Anglican Church of Canada, Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), Christian Reformed Church in North America, The Episcopal Church, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada, Free Methodist Church in Canada, International Commission on English in the Liturgy (a Roman Catholic episcopal group), The Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, Polish national Catholic Church, Presbyterian Church (USA), The Presbyterian Church in Canada, Reformed Church in America, Roman Catholic Church in the United States, Roman Catholic Church in Canada, Unitarian Universalist Christian Fellowship, The United Church of Canada, United Church of Christ, and the United Methodist Church.
The Revised Common Lectionary provides Sunday and special day readings for the entire church year on a three year cycle. The readings are compatible with the Roman Catholic Lectionary for most of the Sundays and special days, but not always the same readings. When you use the The Revised Common Lectionary, you need to have a bible at hand, as the The Revised Common Lectionary is a table of readings, rather than a book of readings such as is used by Roman Catholics.
Why does OCCA use the western, rather than the eastern lectionary?
The outstanding sign of the unity of Christians amidst all those things which divide us is Holy Scripture. The use of The Revised Common Lectionary by our Synod places us in the mainstream of English-speaking Christians. In other words, when we hear the word proclaimed on a Sunday, we know that we are in fellowship with most other Christian churches which use a Lectionary. That knowledge helps cement our bonds even more firmly.
How did the lectionary develop?
During the 1960s, many church families participated in a renewal of the use of Holy Scripture in worship. The Roman Catholics renewed their scriptural understanding as part of the Second Vatican Council, but equally, other households of faith were part of the creation of a lectionary for the churches. The RCC Lectionary, just as the Roman Lectionary, is one of the fruits of that effort.
Some of the features of these lectionaries are now taken for granted. The lectionary draws widely from both Old Testament and New Testament resources. It organizes the readings into continuous or semi-continuous forms, so that over a period of several weeks, church-going people will hear large sections of a particular book. The lectionary is sensitive to the desire of pastors to preach from the scriptures.
Where can I find a copy of the lectionary?
The Revised Common Lectionary is available on line at the Vanderbilt University.
We recommend the paperback copy of the Lectionary, because it contains an excellent Introduction to and directions for use of the RCC. It is available through your favorite local bookseller. It is published by Abingdon Press.
Sanctoral Calendar
It is recorded that the church had moved to the sanctification of time (from the exclusive focus on the world-to-come) by the accession of the Emperor Theodosius the Great in AD 380. With this change came the development of calendars. In the year AD 350 ecclesial calendars in a complete form were found everywhere in the Christian world (though by no means were they standardized -- even today calendars are largely very local in nature).
The cult of saints is even older than the calendar. The earliest clear record of formally remembering a saint is that the Bishop Polycarp, the last of the "giants" of the apostolic age, who was martyred in Smyrna in the middle of the 2nd century. It is from this time that the custom began of observing a saint's day on the day of death, or to use the language of this early period, the saint's "birthday" into eternal life.
Our calendar, then, belongs to a long, historical tradition of honoring women and men who have given their lives in martyrdom, or who were exemplars, prophets, and witnesses. We honor the work in this area of Orthodox, Episcopal and Roman calendars, and add our own choices, as well. A reader of the calendar will see that there is a heavy emphasis upon those who worked for social justice, as befits the needs of this era. May this "cloud of witnesses" inspire us all.
The Calendar is a constant work in progress. Each year the church publishes a new calendar.
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