Question about daily readings

[rusmeister]

I have always wondered, why in the readings do they exclude and skip verses? I can’t see any rationale for today’s reading for example from the gospel of John chapter 19, which has multiple skips and I got out my KJV and looked at what was being excluded and it made no sense at all. Verses 12, 21-24 and 29 are skipped. Why?

 

[The Liturgist]

I have always wondered, why in the readings do they exclude and skip verses? I can’t see any rationale for today’s reading for example from the gospel of John chapter 19, which has multiple skips and I got out my KJV and looked at what was being excluded and it made no sense at all. Verses 12, 21-24 and 29 are skipped. Why?

Frequently, verses not of immediate relevance to the theme of the liturgy will be glossed over, to save time or to keep the liturgy focused.

One could also cite the Paschal gospel stopping at verse 17 when it could have continued to verse 18 without difficulty as an example of this, or for that matter, the Western Rite equivalent stopping at verse 14 (the Last Gospel, John 1:1-14, as used in the Roman Rite and also, due to Latinization, in the Armenian Rite (both Catholic and Oriental Orthodox), and for a time, in other Eastern Catholic churches; I think it was even used in some of the Byzantine Rite churches at one point, but I’m not 100% sure on that, but they definitely used it in the Maronite and Syriac Catholic liturgies, where it is entirely foreign, otherwise.

 

[FenderTL5]

..to save time..

uh, in Orthodoxy?

(j/k)

 

[rusmeister]

Frequently, verses not of immediate relevance to the theme of the liturgy will be glossed over, to save time or to keep the liturgy focused.

One could also cite the Paschal gospel stopping at verse 17 when it could have continued to verse 18 without difficulty as an example of this, or for that matter, the Western Rite equivalent stopping at verse 14 (the Last Gospel, John 1:1-14, as used in the Roman Rite and also, due to Latinization, in the Armenian Rite (both Catholic and Oriental Orthodox), and for a time, in other Eastern Catholic churches; I think it was even used in some of the Byzantine Rite churches at one point, but I’m not 100% sure on that, but they definitely used it in the Maronite and Syriac Catholic liturgies, where it is entirely foreign, otherwise.

This is not a satisfying answer, unfortunately. I don’t think saving time is ever a goal in our worship, and I don’t think the skipped text distracts from the focus of liturgy at all.

 

[The Liturgist]

This is not a satisfying answer, unfortunately. I don’t think saving time is ever a goal in our worship, and I don’t think the skipped text distracts from the focus of liturgy at all.

I’ll conduct a more detailed history of the lectionary. Are there some specific cases you can think of that particularly bother you you wish me to look into?

One thing I like are the arrangement, outside of the lectionary proper, of Psalmody from select verses in various EO and OO liturgical rites (the Syriac Orthodox fenqitho, which is like the Menaion, has some good examples of this) and indeed in the Western rites and of scripture verses to comprise the liturgy as a whole. I would assume neither this, nor the selection of specific verses for the Prokeimenon and Allleluia and their equivalents in other rites such as the Graduale in the Western Rite, bothers you - rather, it sounds like your annoyance is chiefly with the lectionary skipping verses, is that correct?

Perhaps it may be of some consolation to know that the Roman Rite, both before and after the 1969 reforms, contains the most severe examples of this, which post 1969 in the novel three year lectionary, which the Protestants, even many conservative Protestants, then copied in a strange example of liturgical syncretism, includes such important verses as 1 Corinthians 11:27-34, which are now normally omitted in Maundy Thursday services in most Western churches, aside from the small number which use the Traditional Latin Mass or older versions of the Book of Common Prayer or the 1941 Lutheran Hymnal. Unlike the example you cited, these omissions from the Novus Ordo Roman Lectionary and the Revised Common Lectionary actually have severe doctrinal implications.

 

[The Liturgist]

uh, in Orthodoxy?

(j/k)

Well, yes … our current liturgies are mostly severely abbreviated. One thing I like about the canonical Russian Old Rite Orthodox such as the Church of the Nativity in Erie, PA, is that their services have fewer abbreviations, and thus what we do in two hours, they will do in five and a half.

The Ethiopians, the Russians (and Ukrainians), and to a lesser extent the Copts, among all Christians, traditionally have had the longest liturgies, and the Romans traditionally had the shortest liturgies, although the brevity of the old Roman Rite was tempered by the fact that until the ninth century, the Low Mass would be chanted in monotone rather than said quietly (indeed from the writings of St. Ambrose of Milan we can deduce that until he introduced Greek-style antiphonal singing during the successful vigil in 386 AD, to keep the Arians from taking over a church in Milan, which was the last ever such act to have an Imperial sanction despite the personal orthodoxy of St. Theodosius, everything in the Roman church including the hymns were done in monotone, or if not monotone, than some equally drab form of monody sufficiently boring for St. Ambrose to be want to replace it with antiphonal singing, lest the people “perish in soulless monotony”).