For the fixed days, the propers lessons are written into the calendar. These days are also assigned proper lessons that break the lectio continuo pattern of the lessons read in the daily office. Eleven of these are fixed days, while ten move each year in relation to the date of Easter.Īll red letter days have Communion propers - a collect, epistle, and gospel assigned to them - so that, in addition to Mattins and Evensong, Antecommunion is to be read on these days.
The 1549 has twenty-two red letter days in addition to the Sundays of the year the 1552 drops Mary Magdalene, resulting in 21 holy days in addition to Sundays. Whitchurch’s first printed edition of the 1549 Prayer Book continues this tradition.
#RED PRAYER BOOK MANUALS#
They are also often called “red letter days,” because in medieval liturgical manuals red ink was often used to distinguish the Sundays and major festivals from minor festivals in the liturgical calendar. They are called “festivals” or “feast days” because these acts of divine mercy invite joyful celebration.
Sundays and certain other days of the year are called “holy days” because they are days set-apart from worldly pursuits to commemorate the Resurrection (Sundays generally, and Easter-tide particularly) and other manifestations of God’s grace. After that I make a digression to address questions raised by the black letter days in the Prayer Book calendar. As already observed, the Prayer Book’s first preface regards hearing the scriptures read as the primary purpose of liturgy, “that the people (by daily hearing of holy Scripture read in the Church) might continually profit more and more in the knowledge of God, and be the more inflamed with the love of his true Religion.” In this essay, I explore a third cycle, the Proper Lessons for Sundays and Holy Days, which is embedded within the daily lectionary. These are the two annual cycles of reading around which the whole Prayer Book system is built. In my last piece, the first part of this overview of the annual cycles of Bible reading in the Prayer Book, I discussed the Calendar with Table of Lessons for Morning and Evening Prayer (that is, the daily lectionary) and the Epistles and Gospels for the Lord’s Supper (that is the Communion lectionary).