The draft proposal would expand the weekday readings in the Lectionary for Mass in the Latin Rite of the Roman Catholic Church. The goal is to provide a complete and continuous reading of all the books of the Bible. This would be accomplished primarily by increasing the two-year cycle of First Readings on weekdays in Ordinary Time to a ten-year cycle. Year 1 would be used during years ending with the numeral 1, Year 2 during years ending with the numeral 2, Year 10 during years ending with the numeral 0. The average length of those First Readings would be 14 verses. No changes are proposed to the liturgical calendar. Also, the structure of the Liturgy of the Word for weekdays would remain the same, namely, a Gospel passage every day, along with a First Reading and its Responsorial Psalm.
Minor adjustments to the sequence of Gospel readings have been proposed, chiefly to restore those canonical verses that have been omitted in the current Lectionary. This required merging into one reading certain current readings that had been separate, and slightly shifting some readings in order to make room for omitted verses. It is proposed that whenever any canonical verses are skipped over in a current weekday Gospel reading, or any other reading, an optional longer form of that reading be provided which would include the otherwise omitted verses.
The Acts of the Apostles would be read continuously in its entirety during the Easter season. The average length of each reading would be 21 verses. In order to keep the length of the readings to a minimum, the Sunday readings of the Easter season would be integrated with the weekday readings. Thus, there would no longer be a three-year cycle for the First Readings on the Sundays of the Easter season, only a one-year cycle.
No texts of the canonical scriptures have been omitted, even seemingly difficult or boring passages such as genealogies, lists of place names, or violent or “scandalous” passages. The primary changes are for the weekdays of Ordinary Time.
The draft proposes a quasi-chronological order to the sequence of books, but does not insist on any particular order. Subjective decisions had to be made as to where to divide the verses of a particular book to delineate the reading selection. Other choices could be made to accomplish the aim of reading all of the books of the Bible completely and continuously in the liturgy.