Most Catholic and Lutheran churches follow the same schedule of Bible readings. To help you keep track, I made Bible bookmarks that list the entire schedule for the 1st reading, Psalm, 2nd reading, and Gospel.

Whenever I finish a meal before my 1-year-old and 4-year-old, I get out our family Bible, and read one of the week’s readings. Before reading, I always state that these verses are what we’ll hear in church this Sunday.

I love the idea of getting my kids ready for the upcoming verses that will be read in church.

Seven reasons why it’s good to read the lectionary at home before church

1. To be prepared
   We could just participate in church, not knowing what the reading will be. But by reading the verses ahead of time, we know what will be read at church. When church comes, we’ll have already discussed the verses.
2. Anticipation
   By knowing the verses ahead of time, there is a little bit of anticipation of hearing the verses read at the “official” platform, and heard by everyone. What will the pastor say about these verses?
3. Reinforce the verses that are being read
   Instead of hearing the verses just once a week, we get to hear them multiple times. This gives us the chance to really digest God’s word.
4. Multiple explanations of the Bible reading
   If you read and discuss the weekly verses at home, by the time you get to church, you’ll get another explanation from the pastor.
5. The Bible isn’t only for church
   The Bible is for other places too, like home.
6. Church isn’t only for church
   By bringing the lectionary into your home, you not only bring Bible reading into your home, you also bring a part of church into your home. This lectionary reading is a part of the church service. By reading the lectionary home, you are bringing God’s home into your home.
7. A starting point
   We all know that reading our Bible regularly is good. But what do you read for that day? The Bible is such a large book. Do you just randomly go some place in the Bible? Maybe you could do one of those “read the Bible in a year” schedules. Those plans usually have too many verses for me to dig in deep. With the weekly reading, I get all the benefits mentioned above.

The bookmarks

I designed these bookmarks to fit nicely into my study Bible. Each bookmark is just tall enough to poke out of the top of the Bible.

Each bookmark shows the verses used in the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod and the Roman Catholic church. For the 2020-2021 church season, both denominations are in “Year B”.

After every week, I like to use a pencil to cross out the previous week’s verses. That way, I can quickly identify the current week’s verse.

I also really like how each week displays the seasonal color for the church. Yeah, the regular season has lots of green. But there are those weeks where there is a red or black. Sometimes white. Christmas is interesting, because the Lutheran church uses blue, whereas the Catholic church uses purple.

» Download Lectionary Bookmarks for 2020-2021 for LCMS and Roman Catholic (PDF file)

Sources

Here are the internet sources of the lectionary schedules for both the Roman Catholic and the LCMS.

• The LCMS source is always the same one I use every year from lcms.org.
• The source for the Roman Catholic lectionary is a new one for me this year. Now I’m using the lectionary schedule from vanderbilt.edu wordtoworship.com. Previously I was using one from catholic-resources.org. This Catholic-Resources version made it very challenging to get the schedule into a spreadsheet form. Vanderbilt’s is a little more spreadsheet friendly.

Please feel free to print out these bookmarks and use them.