Many will have heard of the Churchof England's move onto a new Calendar and Lectionary though probably notso many will know why there was any need to change.

Anglicans throughout the world have now adopted a pattern of Sunday reading of Scripture in common with theirfellow Christians in the Roman Catholic Church and the vast majority ofthe Free Churches. For this ecumenical reason alone, it gives the reasonfor change validity. But the new Lectionary, as it is known, takes on afar.more sensible approach to the reading-or better still, hearing-of Scriptureby working through the books of the Bible in a consistent and continuousway: the three- yearly pattern of reading uses the gospels of Matthew,Mark and Luke as a base, employing John at such 'high seasons' as Christmas,Passiontide and Easter. Because the Old Testament and the Epistle readingsare usually also continuous, there is not necessarily any obvious 'theme'emerging, which may shake some preachers, but provide the Scriptures themselvesare being expounded, this continuous approach is likely to prove far moreeffective. Readings proper to the day are still there for the main seasons,festivals and holy days, however.

The changes make some minor adjustmentsto the names of the Sundays, which tend now to be 'in' rather than 'of'or 'after'. So The First Sunday after Easter now becomes TheSecond Sunday of Easter though we revert back to Prayer Book use ofSundays after Trinity rather than Sundays after Pentecost, sinceno other Church was following this latter practice. The aim of the changeis to underline that, for example, Easter is not just one day plus a coupleof bank holidays: Easter is a season of fifty days culminating in the feastof Pentecost, and should be observed as such throughout the season. Similarly,Christmastide is extended to the former practice of recognising the feastof the Presentation of Christ in the Temple (Candlemas) as the 'turning'day, when Christmas and the Epiphany of Christ give way and the Churchturns from Bethlehem to Jerusalem, from the crib to the cross.

The nine Sundays before Christmas ofthe ASB have disappeared, and Advent is again now clearly seen as the beginningof the Christian Year, though the month of November reflects an endingto the year, and recognises that Ail Saints' Day, All Souls' Day and RemembranceSunday say something to us about life and death and the last things, culminatingin the celebration of Christ the King of all, living and departed, in heavenand on earth.

With the inclusion of many new namesin the Calendar of men and women whose personal sanctity is now recognisedand celebrated in the Church, saints' days are given something ofa boost. And although people like Willibrord and Hildegard of Bingen are'new' though from the early and late medieval period, others more recentlya significant part of our Christian life, such as Florence Nightingaleand William Temple, are commemorated. There is a noticeable visibilityof women, not so much in evidence before, and also the recognition thatthey don't necessarily have to have been nuns in order to qualify: so ElizabethFry, the prison reformer is there, also signifying that they don't haveto be Anglican either. This refreshing of the Calendar enables us to sharemore widely the celebration of those 'whose examples have excited us toholiness'.