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Introduction

When, in 1935, Bishop Walter Frere first produced his Collects, Epistles and Gospels for the Lesser Feasts According to the Calendar set out in 1928, he was providing, for the first time in one book, collects and readings for use on ‘black letter’ saints’ days in the Church of England. This tradition was maintained by the excellent book compiled by Martin Draper and George Timms, The Cloud of Witnesses, produced to complement the publication of The Alternative Service Book 1980, and by many others throughout the Anglican Communion.

The authorization of a new Calendar in the Church of England, first in 1997, and subsequently with slight modification in Common Worship, and including – for the first time since the Reformation – authorized proper collects for the ‘Black Letter’ days, meant that an entirely new companion was required. The compilation of this companion was undertaken by Brother Tristam SSF, a member of the Liturgical Commission, and of the committee which had drafted the Calendar, and the first edition of this book was published in 1997.

At the same time as the Church of England has been revising its Calendar, so too have the other Anglican Churches in Britain and Ireland. These Calendars generally share many of the same commemorations, occasionally with a different emphasis or date, but each of these Churches also has its own selection of local commemorations. The Church of Ireland and the Church in Wales each published a ‘supplement’ of local additions to Exciting Holiness, and this material, together with the equivalent material from the Scottish Episcopal Church, was incorporated into the second edition, which also followed the Common Worship text of the psalms. The third edition includes a small number of additions and changes to the calendars that have been made in the intervening period, together with a few corrections and some other improvements.

All this helps to make Exciting Holiness, as its subtitle suggests, a convenient companion to the Calendar for Anglicans throughout Britain and Ireland.

Simon Kershaw