About

Live with these texts.

Liturgy Letter curates resources to accompany The Revised Common Lectionary and encourages historic Christian worship forms and practices. Weekly newsletters provide ways to engage the lectionary texts for the week, with a special focus on the Psalm and Gospel texts.

Goals:

  • To encourage holistic, corporate, and individual spiritual formation.
  • To inspire confessional and canonical frameworks for understanding and living into the Christian faith.
  • To reaffirm the necessity of Scripture and history in Christian practice and organization. 
  • To provide content that is historic, ecumenical, formational, and accessible.
  • To reflect upon the “Great Tradition” of the Christian faith that is common within Roman Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant traditions.
  • To nurture unity in historic Christian worship forms.
  • To provide exposure to common Scripture texts.
  • To enliven different modes and proven practices for engaging the story of Jesus revealed in Scripture and through his church.
  • To be a helpful resource for pastors, worship planners, laity, and other church leaders.

What is the Revised Common Lectionary?

The Revised Common Lectionary is a three-year cycle of Holy Scripture readings that follow the Sundays, festivals, and seasons of the Christian liturgical year.  It was compiled in 1992 by the ecumenical Consultation on Common Texts to provide a balanced scriptural guide for weekly worship that ensures exposure to the main themes of Christian faith and worship.  It is ecumenical in nature and overlaps heavily with the Roman Catholic lectionary.

In conjunction with the Christian liturgical calendar, the cyclical nature of the Gospel readings places all of Holy Scripture in the context of the life of Jesus Christ. The Old and New Testament readings revolve around the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Four texts are assigned for each Sunday and festival

  • The first reading usually comes from the Old Testament but is replaced by a reading from Acts during the season of Easter
  • Psalm(s)
  • A reading from an Epistle or other New Testament writing
  • A reading from a Gospel (Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John).

The three-year lectionary cycle focuses on different portions of the Gospels each year

  • Matthew in Year A
  • Mark in Year B
  • Luke in Year C
  • John featured at certain times in each year