Yesterday I finished my 2018-2019 lectionary bookmarks. I have five bookmarks; one for each of the readings: 1st reading, Psalm, Epistle, and Gospel reading (and one for the Alleluia).

Whenever my daughter and I have breakfast, I like to read to her the Bible verses for the upcoming Sunday.

I love preparing for the upcoming Sunday’s Bible readings. When we arrive to church, I feel familiar with with is being read. After reading the verses repeatedly during the week, it’s so awesome hearing the church read the verses out loud to you. It’s kinda like studying about a particular painting during the week, and then going to the art museum to see it in person. (ok, that metaphor doesn’t carry over exactly, but you get the point. The preparation makes you enjoy it all the more on Sunday).

Last year I made the two sets: one set of four bookmarks for the LCMS (Lutheran Church Missouri Synod) and a set for the Roman Catholic church. My wife is Catholic, and I am Lutheran.

With the two sets of LCMS and Catholic bookmarks, we ended up with a lot of bookmarks in our Bible! This year, to simplify things, I combined the Catholic and LCMS into one set.

I love seeing the Catholic and LCMS verses for each week side-by-side. It’s rather interesting to see how the verses vary or are similar each week. This year is the series C. Last year was series B. I think series B had more similarities between the Catholic and Lutheran church. At some point, I’ll sit down and draw out the similarities and differences.

The subtle differences in Series B was that the Roman Catholic would use less verses for a reading. So they might have the first 8 verses from a section. Whereas the Lutheran reading might use 12 verses from the same section. For instance, the Lutheran reading would go a bit longer.

Also common was that the Catholic reading would skip verses in a section. Whereas the Lutheran reading wouldn’t skip verses as often. It always made me curious which verses the Catholics were skipping.

I’m pretty pleased with how the bookmarks turned out. They are sufficient for their purpose. Not anything fancy. The bookmarks are designed to be slightly taller than my Bible. (I use the journaling ESV Bible. The cover is designed by my brother Erik Maldre who is the Art Director at Crossway)

If you’d like to download these bookmarks, feel free! Here’s a printable PDF:

» Download Lectionary Bookmarks for 2018-2019 for LCMS and Roman Catholic (PDF file)

I didn’t include all the Roman Catholic days of obligation. Sorry, RC peeps! Only so much room on these bookmarks. But at least RC gets a little bonus bookmark with the Alleluia verses. LCMS doesn’t provide the Alleluia in their lectionary.

Oh! Which reminds me. Here are the sources for the lectionary from both the Roman Catholic and the LCMS.

• LCMS lectionary
• Catholic lectionary

You’ll notice that the LCMS lectionary is much more organized. They have everything in one doc file. The Catholic lectionary listings are all over the place. It took me quite some time trying to get all their dates together. That’s part of the reason why I didn’t include all their Holy Days of Obligation in the list. And besides, for my purpose, we only do the readings for the upcoming Sunday.