In my beginning is my end

Jules Baudot, building on the investigations of Cardinal Tommasi, gives this rendering of the Post-Pentecostal sequence of gospels, from which those for Sundays have quite obviously been derived.

The BCP pretty rigorously follows Sarum, where more of this list is preserved than in the subsequent reordering at Trent. But Trent does some lovely things, such as suturing the novel gospel for the Last Sunday before Advent -- Matt 24:15-35 -- to the new gospel for the First Sunday of Advent: Luke 21:25-33.

This latter innovation would incline me to view Advent as the end of the liturgical year, rather than the beginning but it is, of course, both beginning and end at once. Better to embrace fully the complexio oppositorum than to proceed as they did in the reforms of the 1960s, where they merely entertained a vote in committee ... and simple majorities carried the day. Sigh.

Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.