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The Liturgies of the Eastern Churches (Typicon or Ustav) This item provides background information for the booklet: ‘The Authors of The Gospels’. As such, it touches the subject of liturgy in a brief manner only. For those wishing to learn more about the Eastern Churches and their liturgy, we suggest you
go to our TV, Radio and Audio section and click on: ‘The Light of The East’. [L 520] or
To illustrate the pattern of Gospel reading, we have used the Byzantine Typicon for 2006. The following extract is taken from Monday, September 18th –Post-festive Day of the Exaltation of the Cross. “The continuous reading of the Gospel of the Holy Evangelist Luke begins on the Monday following the Sunday after the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. The four Gospels are all read in their entirety in the Byzantine Church and the reading of each begins with a great Feast. The Gospel of St. John the Theologian begins with the feast of Feasts, the Pascha of our Lord [Easter] and is read until Pentecost. The Gospel of St Matthew begins with the Feast of Pentecost, … and is read until the Feast of the Holy Cross. The Gospel of St. Luke, then, begins with the Feast of the Holy Cross and is read until the Great Fast. The first Sundays in the Matthew cycle and in the Lucan cycle are of the call of the apostles Peter and Andrew, James and John, indicating that these Gospels also call us to follow after Jesus our Lord. The Gospel of St. Mark is read during the Holy and Great Fast, but since the Divine Liturgy is celebrated only on Saturday and Sunday, the remaining sections are read in the last six weeks of the Matthean and Lucan cycles. …” This shows how Luke’s Gospel follows that of Matthew and is prior to Mark’s Gospel. During the past 2000 years some texts have been allocated to Feast Days and, in the chart below, have been indicated by green shading. The remaining readings show the sequence of Matthew-Luke-Mark-John for the rest of the liturgical year. The Gospel sequence is easier to see when you commence looking at the liturgical year at Pentecost. The Liturgies of the Greek, Russian, Melkite (Antioch) and some of the Syrian Churches follow a similar pattern.
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