Gospel Reading at Liturgy

Everything in the Liturgy's first half climbs toward this moment. The Little Entrance carried the Gospel book high through the church; the Epistle has been read; now the choir sings Alleluia with psalm verses while, in most uses, the deacon censes the Gospel book, the icons, and the people with incense (exactly when the censing happens varies between traditions). The Alleluia is not filler before the reading: it is the acclamation of the reading — heaven's own word of praise escorting the words of Christ.

The Gospel book itself never lies about casually: it rests at the center of the altar table, is carried in procession, and is venerated as an icon of Christ, the Word of God among His people. To read from it, the deacon asks and receives the priest's blessing, then carries the book out to the ambo before the doors of the iconostasis; where there is no deacon, the priest himself reads. The summons rings out — "Wisdom!" — with the call to "hear the Holy Gospel," and the people, standing, answer before a word of the text is read: "Glory to Thee, O Lord, glory to Thee" — and answer the same way when it ends. One praises a King before He speaks.

The Church treats the proclamation of the Gospel as a sacramental act, not a reading exercise: in it Christ Himself teaches His people, as He once taught in the synagogue at Nazareth, where He read the prophet and then preached (Luke 4:16-21). That is why the reading is entrusted to the ordained — the deacon or priest — while the Epistle is given to a lay reader; why everyone stands; why candles are held beside the book; and why in many places the faithful bow their heads as the reading begins. "Faith cometh by hearing" (Romans 10:17), and the Liturgy stages the hearing with all the reverence the words deserve.

Normally the reading is followed at once by the homily — the Word read, then the Word opened. Together the readings and the preaching form the heart of the Liturgy of the Word, the half of the service that catechumens in the ancient Church could attend before being dismissed.

Which passage is read is fixed by the Church's lectionary, an annual cycle beginning at Pascha. The Paschal Liturgy opens, startlingly, not with an Easter narrative but with John 1 — "In the beginning was the Word" — and the Gospel of John then carries the Church from Pascha to Pentecost, the season of the deepest mysteries. From the day after Pentecost, Matthew takes over through the summer, with Mark filling most weekdays later in the cycle; in mid-September, near the feast of the Exaltation of the Cross, the readings leap to Luke — scholars call it the "Lukan jump" — and the Saturdays and Sundays of Great Lent are given largely to Mark. Feasts and saints' days have their own appointed Gospels, so a single Liturgy may have more than one reading; and on the weekdays of Great Lent, when no full Liturgy is served, there is no liturgical Gospel at all.

The result is that an Orthodox Christian who follows the daily readings walks through nearly the whole New Testament every year, in step with the Church's seasons. HolyStudy's daily lectionary lays out each day's Epistle and Gospel, with the Fathers' commentary alongside.