As is often the case, today’s holiday, the Confession of Saint Peter, has a special reading for the Morning Office: Matthew 16:13-20.  As our new ACNA daily lectionary likes to do, this lesson is a repeat of the Gospel lesson at today’s communion service.  So if you’re saying the Daily Office but have no Eucharist to attend today, you still get the primary story of the holiday.  The downside is that if you do attend today’s Communion, you hear the same passage twice rather than hearing something different to deepen and enrich the day with further scriptural insight.

As we noted last week, this feast day is an excellent “epiphany moment”, revealing the divinity of Jesus through the words of Peter.  This feast day is actually a modern addition to the Prayer Book tradition; it first appeared for us in 1979.  And this seems a good contribution to the calendar, in my opinion, reinforcing the traditional epiphany theme.

If you haven’t been doing so, perhaps this is a good day to pull out the Surge illuminare as the first Canticle at Morning Prayer, too.  If you have, then perhaps bring back the Te Deum in honor of the major feast!