Question: what cycle of readings is the catholic church on

title: Lectionary
text: By the Medieval era the Jewish community had a standardized schedule of scripture readings both from the Torah and the prophets to be read in the synagogue . A sequential selection was read from the Torah , followed by the `` haftarah '' -- a selection from the prophetic books or historical narratives ( e.g. `` Judges , '' `` Kings , '' etc . ) closely linked to the selection from the Torah . Jesus may have read a providentially `` random '' reading when he read from Isaiah 61 : 1 - 2 , as recorded in Luke 4 : 16 - 21 , when he inaugurated his public ministry . The early Christians adopted the Jewish custom of reading extracts from the Old Testament on the Sabbath . They soon added extracts from the writings of the Apostles and Evangelists .