Epistle Reading (Apostolos)

When the Trisagion ends, the celebrant blesses the congregation — "Peace be unto all" — and the Liturgy turns to listening. First comes the prokeimenon, a pair of psalm verses sung between reader and people, the remnant of whole psalms once sung at this point; it sets the key for what follows. Then the deacon calls "Wisdom!", the reader announces which book the passage comes from, and the apostolic word sounds in the assembly — as it has since the apostles themselves asked that their letters be read aloud in the churches (Colossians 4:16).

The reading is called the Apostolos — "the Apostle" — because it always comes from the apostolic writings: the Acts of the Apostles or one of the New Testament epistles (the word epistle simply means letter). The same name belongs to the service book that contains the readings arranged for every day of the year (the Apostolos). One New Testament book is never appointed in the Church's lectionary: Revelation, which entered the canon of the Christian East late, after the cycle of readings had taken shape — though she receives it fully as Scripture, and its images of heavenly worship saturate the Liturgy itself.

The Apostolos is ordinarily read not by the priest or deacon but by a reader — sometimes one tonsured to the ancient minor order of Reader, in many parishes simply a capable layman or laywoman. This is deliberate. The Gospel belongs to the ordained ministers; the Epistle is the proclamation the Church places in a lay voice, sounding from the midst of the people. In most traditions it is chanted on a melodic tone rather than spoken — local practice ranges from plain reading to elaborate chant — because the Church tends to sing what it loves.

The listeners are meant to work too. The exclamations that surround the reading — "Let us attend!", "Wisdom!" — are not decoration; they are the Church elbowing us awake: what follows demands the whole mind. St. Paul's charge to Timothy, "give attendance to reading" (1 Timothy 4:13), describes the congregation's job as much as the reader's. There is also a quiet theology in the order of the service: the psalm verses of the prokeimenon give the prophets' voice, the Apostolos gives the apostles', and the Gospel gives Christ's own — the Church hears her whole inheritance, in order, at every Liturgy.

The readings follow a continuous course through the year. The cycle begins on Pascha night with the Acts of the Apostles, read daily until Pentecost — the season of the risen Christ's Church learning to walk — and after Pentecost the epistles follow in order, day by day, so that someone who heard every day's reading would take in nearly the whole apostolic corpus in a year. Feasts and saints' days have their own appointed readings besides, so a given Liturgy may have two epistle lessons. The one gap is deliberate: on the weekdays of Great Lent the full Divine Liturgy is not celebrated and no Apostolos is appointed — the Church reads from the Old Testament instead, at the daily offices and the Presanctified Liturgy.

After the Epistle the celebrant blesses the reader, the Alleluia is sung, and the Liturgy of the Word rises to its summit: the Gospel.