past liturgical calendars QUESTION from Celine powers on September 17, 2002 Is there some place on the internet where i can access old litugical calendar? I understand the St Joseph's Sunday and the St Joseph's Daily missals have tables of litugical dates, but I need dates going back further than the ones in current missals, and I don't have a Sunday missal. I am cateloging a large homily collection spanning 1950's to 2001. I need all 3 tables of dates: Major feasts, Sundays, daily, in order to correlate calendar dates with liturgical dates.
Second, once I have correlated the calendar dates with the liturgical dates, I also need a table of the scripture readings for each of those dates. Note, it spans pre-and post-vatican periods. How can I get this information? Thank you.
ANSWER by Mr. Jacob Slavek on September 26, 2002 Dear Mrs. Powers,
Sounds like quite a project you have!
All of the liturgical tables that I found on the Internet were for current years. Anyway I think it would be better to use a missal since it would be less tedious than the Internet (my opinion)
The Saint Andrew Missal goes back to 1956. Actually, though, the dates of the feasts can be calculated yourself: the rules are found in most missals and breviaries. The key is the date of Easter: which always falls on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox. Since Astronomy is an interest of mine, so I have the dates of the full moons for well before the time of Christ. Also remember that the liturgical year begins with the first Sunday in Advent, not Jan 1st.
Now for the readings: in the old rite, the same readings are used each year for every feast. They can be found in your Saint Joseph Missal. The readings for weekdays are taken from Sunday unless there is a feast.
In the new rite the readings follow yearlong cycles for Sundays. They are called cycle A, B and C. Currently we are in cycle A. One of the reforms of the Liturgy is that every weekday has its own readings: Year 1 and year 2. This is year 2. Of course these readings are found in missals. As far as I know there has never been published a table of readings, except possibly in unofficial commercial liturgical publications. I think that you would need to find them for each day in a missal.
Let me know if you have more questions.
Mr. Slavek
Back to Index Page