The Kyrie eleison — Lord have mercy — is the most ancient element of the Christian Liturgy, adopted by the Church between 300 and 400, and derived from the Greek litanic tradition of the Eastern liturgies. In the Sarum Mass it was sung in the ninefold form: Kyrie eleison three times, Christe eleison three times, Kyrie eleison three times — the ninefold Kyrie of the Anglican Missal.

The 1552 Prayer Book replaced the ninefold Kyrie with a threefold response to the Ten Commandments. The Missal restores the ninefold Kyrie as the response of penitence before the Gloria. The BCP threefold form (Lord have mercy upon us, Christ have mercy upon us, Lord have mercy upon us) retains the ancient words but simplifies the structure.

Thomas notes that the ninefold Kyrie is the sole relic of the original bidding prayers of the Mass — the Deacon summoning the people to pray for specific intentions, to each of which the congregation responded Kyrie eleison. When those bidding prayers were compressed into the ninefold form, the Kyrie became a fixed penitential act rather than a congregational response, and in that form it passed into the Sarum Mass and thence into the Anglican Missal.

In the 1928 BCP plain form, the Gloria in Excelsis is sung or said after the Post-Communion Prayer, closing the service. This follows the 1549 First Prayer Book and the Sarum Mass, and is the older Gallican and Eastern position. It gives the service a eucharistic arc: the people come to the table in penitence, receive the Body and Blood of the Lord, and depart with the song of the angels on their lips.

In the Anglican Missal, the Gloria is sung at the opening of the service after the Kyrie, following the 1552 revision. It is omitted in Advent and Lent. This position treats the Gloria as a festive opening hymn of praise, setting the tone of the service before the Liturgy of the Word begins.

Both positions are canonical and historically grounded. The low church tradition that places the Gloria at the close is not a diminished form — it is the older form, and the one the 1928 BCP preserves.

The Anglican Missal closes every Mass with the Last Gospel — the Prologue of St. John (In the beginning was the Word, John 1:1–14), said by the priest at the foot of the altar after the Blessing. The congregation kneels at the words And the Word was made flesh.

The Last Gospel is absent from the 1928 BCP. It entered the Roman Rite in the mediaeval period, was carried into the Sarum Use, and passed into the Anglican Missal as a closing act of adoration of the Incarnate Word — a fitting theological conclusion to the Eucharistic celebration. Its Johannine theology of the Incarnation completes the Christological arc of the service.

This entry documents a discrepancy between the Missal Postcommunion and the 1928 BCP's Low Sunday Gospel pericope, noted in pastoral reflection on the appointed texts for the day. It is the first formally documented discrepancy in this concordance and stands as the model for entries of this type.

The Gospel Pericope

The 1928 BCP appoints for Low Sunday the Gospel of John 20:19–31 — the appearance of the Risen Christ to the disciples on Easter evening, Thomas's absence, and the second appearance eight days later in which Thomas makes his confession My Lord and my God. The pericope as commonly read concludes at verse 29 — the beatitude spoken over those who have not seen and yet have believed.

The fuller Johannine pericope continues through verses 30–31, which provide the Evangelist's own explicit statement of purpose for the entire Gospel:

These two verses do not merely conclude the pericope — they are the theological hinge of the Fourth Gospel. The Evangelist is declaring that the entire Gospel, including the Thomas narrative, was composed precisely to elicit and sustain the faith that Thomas confesses. The closing verse of the Thomas narrative is also the closing verse of the Gospel's original ending.

The Missal Postcommunion

The Anglican Missal's Postcommunion for Low Sunday keys to this fuller text. Its reference to believing and receiving life through the name of Christ — which echoes verse 31 directly — makes full theological sense only when the Gospel has been read through verse 31. When the 1928 BCP pericope ends at verse 29, the Postcommunion's reference hangs without its scriptural anchor, and the liturgical arc of the day is left incomplete.

The Theological Significance

The omission of verses 30–31 from the 1928 BCP is not an error of carelessness but a feature of the American BCP's tendency to prune Gospel pericopes to their narrative core, removing the Evangelist's own commentary. In the case of Low Sunday, the cost of this pruning is particularly high because verse 31 is not a mere appendix to the Thomas narrative — it is its theological explanation. Thomas confesses My Lord and my God; the Evangelist immediately tells us why that confession matters: these things are written that ye might believe. The two verses belong together.

This section will document the Introits, Graduals, and Sequences appointed in the Anglican Missal for the principal seasons of the liturgical year — Advent, Christmastide, and Epiphanytide — noting where the Missal's psalm verses and chants enrich or diverge from the 1928 BCP plain form.

Entries will be added as they are identified and verified, following the model of the Low Sunday documentation above.

The penitential seasons — Septuagesima-tide, Lent, and Holy Week — are where the Anglican Missal's enrichment of the 1928 BCP is most extensive, with tracts, sequences, and ceremonial additions (the stripping of the altar, the Mass of the Presanctified) that have no parallel in the BCP plain form.

This section will document those additions and any discrepancies between the Missal pericopes and the 1928 BCP appointments during these seasons.