On Praying through the Bible in a Year

I love the Daily Office. It’s been a great way for me to order my prayer life. Pro-tip: If you have a hard time sticking to daily prayer, try publicizing that you’re going to pray it publicly on Facebook or some other streaming service or offer to help get a public service going at your church—as I talked about in my last post, if you create public commitments, you’re more likely to keep them.

I’ll probably get to why the Daily Office is so great for me at some other point. But this post is more about one of the places the Daily Office could be improved—the lectionary. Cranmer’s original intent was to have people read through the entire Bible, or the greater part thereof (as per his 1549 preface to the Book of Common Prayer), and yet there have always been significant portions of the Bible missing from the lectionary, an issue becoming more glaring with decreased reading lengths in newer prayer book versions. I’m of the mind that more Bible reading is good—so I wanted a lectionary that reads through the actual entire Bible in a year. You’ll find that below, as well as being able to download it here.

Here’s some finer detail on how it’s set up:

1. Except for the Apocrypha and Psalms, it is broken up according to pericope.

2. The Old Testament, including all the books of the Apocrypha found in the King James Version of the Bible, is read through in its entirety once per year. The New Testament, with the Epistles and Revelation read in at Morning Prayer and the Gospel as the reading for Evening Prayer, is read through three times in a year.

3. Updated 3/3/2022: I’ve returned to requiring two readings for Morning Prayer and two readings for Evening Prayer. The first reading for Morning Prayer will follow Genesis through Proverbs and the first reading for Evening Prayer will follow Ecclesiastes through the Apocrypha. This will make for slightly more reading throughout the day but less during any given Office.

4. The Psalter follows closely to Cranmer’s 30-day cycle, and, when a month has 30 days, uses it exactly. However, it has been slightly tweaked for months with 31 or 28 days.

5. I have it set up to alternate between Rite I with the Coverdale Psalter and Rite II with the 1979 Psalter. Some people will want to stick to one Rite and Psalter, some will want to add Enriching Our Worship and a more contemporary Psalter, some will want to use all three, some will want to alternate yearly—all are fine. I just wanted to give a baseline option exposing someone to the range of 1979 prayer book Daily Office options.

6. I’ve opted to go back to the secular calendar lectionary rather than the church calendar version American prayer books have used since the 1928 version. This increases the ease with which one can find what readings to do for a particular day.

I’m putting these readings, with the non-Psalm ones taken from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible and the Psalms form their respective Psalters, in a Google document so people can find the readings in one location. I’ll try to stay at least one day ahead so if you want to start using it for the Daily Office you can as soon as you’d like.

Note: This is not the lectionary for the Daily Office authorized for public worship in Episcopal Churches. If you want to use this for that purpose, you need to get your bishop’s permission.