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Connector for Claude

Church Year

“For everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven.”Ecclesiastes 3:1 · WEB

A free, read-only connector that puts the church calendar inside Claude. Ask what season a date falls in and what color the day is, which feasts are coming, when Easter and Orthodox Pascha fall in any year, and which readings are appointed for a Sunday, with the Bible text if you want it. Built for pastors, worship planners, musicians and anyone who keeps the Christian year. No account, no sign-in, nothing to install.

Connect it

Connector URL:

https://crossandcovenant.co/api/mcp/church-year
  • Claude (web and desktop): open Settings, then Connectors, choose Add custom connector, name it Church Year, and paste the URL. Leave authentication empty.
  • Claude Code: claude mcp add --transport http church-year https://crossandcovenant.co/api/mcp/church-year
  • Any MCP client: the server speaks Streamable HTTP at the URL above and needs no authentication.

Try these

  • “What liturgical season are we in today, what color is it, and when is Easter this year and for the Orthodox?”
  • “Give me the readings for the Third Sunday of Advent, Year B, with the gospel text in the King James Version.”
  • “Plan a 12-week sermon series starting June 7, 2026, and tell me which book I could preach straight through.”

Tools

All four tools only read. None of them changes anything, anywhere.

Season for a date season_for_date

Says where any date falls in the Western church year: the season, the week of the season, the day's observance and color, the church year with its lectionary year (A, B or C), and that year's Western Easter and Orthodox Pascha.

Inputs: date (YYYY-MM-DD, optional, default today in Mountain Time)

Readings for a Sunday or feast readings_for_sunday

Gives the appointed first reading, psalm, second reading and gospel, with their alternatives, for a Sunday or major feast. A weekday without its own lessons moves to the next Sunday. With include_text it adds the passage text in the World English Bible or King James Version.

Inputs: date, or occasion (for example advent-1, proper-23, easter-day) with year (A, B or C); include_text (true or false); translation (web or kjv)

Upcoming feast days upcoming_feast_days

Lists feasts, fasts and holy days in a window, with colors, after the prayer book's rules that move a feast off a Sunday or out of Holy Week and Easter Week. Can include Orthodox Pascha, Julian-calendar Christmas and Reformation Day.

Inputs: from (YYYY-MM-DD), days (1 to 400, default 60), include_other_traditions, include_saints_days

Plan a sermon series plan_sermon_series

Lays out a run of Sundays with each Sunday's name, season, color and readings, the seasons crossed, feasts that land on those Sundays, and every book read on three or more Sundays in a row, naming the longest run as a possible series spine.

Inputs: start_date (YYYY-MM-DD), weeks (1 to 26), focus (first, second, gospel or psalm, optional)

How the calendar is computed

  • Easter comes from the Gregorian computus, the rule the prayer book states: the first Sunday after the full moon on or after March 21, by the church’s tables. Orthodox Pascha uses the Julian computus and is given on the Gregorian calendar.
  • Seasons and Sundays follow the calendar of the 1979 Book of Common Prayer, which the Revised Common Lectionary shares for Sunday names: Advent begins on the Sunday from November 27 to December 3, Year A begins in years divisible by three, and Proper N is the Sunday closest to May 11 plus N minus 1 weeks.
  • Feasts that collide move by the prayer book’s rules: a feast on a Sunday moves to the next open weekday unless it is a principal feast, the Holy Name, the Presentation or the Transfiguration; feasts in Holy Week or Easter Week move to the week after the Second Sunday of Easter.
  • Colors follow common Western practice. The prayer book does not prescribe colors, and churches vary, so alternatives are named where they are common.
  • Every computed date is tested against published calendars: the U.S. Census Bureau Easter table for 2018 to 2040, published Orthodox Pascha dates for 2020 to 2035, every Sunday and holy day of 2018 to 2027 on the Episcopal Church’s calendar at The Lectionary Page, and Advent 2025 to Advent 2028 on the Vanderbilt Divinity Library’s lectionary calendar.

Which readings, and why

The readings are the Sunday and Holy Day lectionary of the 1979 Book of Common Prayer of the Episcopal Church, which its owner released into the public domain. It is a three-year cycle (Years A, B and C, reading Matthew, Mark and Luke in turn) and is the parent of the Revised Common Lectionary that many churches read today. The two agree on the cycle and the names of the Sundays and share many readings, but differ in places, most often after Pentecost. The Revised Common Lectionary table itself is copyrighted by the Consultation on Common Texts, so this connector does not reproduce it. Numbers in parentheses in a citation are optional lengthenings.

Data sources and licenses

  • Lectionary citations: The Book of Common Prayer (1979), pages 889 to 931, as transcribed at bcponline.org. Public domain. The few transcription slips we corrected are listed with their reasons in the data file.
  • Psalm verse counts: the 1979 psalter, pages 585 to 808. Public domain. The prayer book numbers verses differently from Bible translations in many psalms; when it does, the connector gives the whole psalm and says so instead of guessing which verses match.
  • Bible text: the World English Bible (public domain) and the King James Version (public domain outside the United Kingdom), from eBible.org, stored on our own server and shared with the Cross + Covenant Bible connector. Books of the Apocrypha appointed in the lectionary are cited without text.
  • Calendar: computed; no outside service is called.

Limits

  • Years 1583 to 4099. Feast windows up to 400 days; sermon series up to 26 Sundays.
  • Passage text covers the first set of readings for the day, up to 150 verses per reading.
  • Fair-use limits shared by everyone: 120 calls a minute per tool, 300 a minute in total, and 20,000 a day. Past a limit the tool answers with the time to try again.

For reviewers: how to test

No account is needed. Each of these returns a real result:

  • season_for_date with date: "2026-10-11": Season after Pentecost, week 20, green, Year A, Easter 2026-04-05, Pascha 2026-04-12.
  • readings_for_sunday with occasion: "easter-day", year: "B", include_text: true: gospel Mark 16:1-8 with its text.
  • upcoming_feast_days with from: "2026-10-11", days: 60: Saint Luke on 2026-10-19 (moved off Sunday), All Saints’ Day, Christ the King on 2026-11-22, Thanksgiving, and Advent on 2026-11-29.
  • plan_sermon_series with start_date: "2026-06-07", weeks: 12: twelve Sundays from Proper 5, with Matthew as the series spine.

Troubleshooting

  • “not a real calendar date”: dates use YYYY-MM-DD, for example 2026-12-25.
  • “is not an occasion this lectionary knows”: the answer lists every valid occasion, such as advent-1 to advent-4, epiphany-1 to epiphany-8, lent-1 to lent-5, proper-1 to proper-29, and named feasts like all-saints.
  • Readings differ from my church’s bulletin: your church may read the Revised Common Lectionary or another lectionary. See “Which readings, and why” above.
  • The connector does not show up in Claude: check the URL is exactly the one above, with no trailing slash, and that authentication is left empty.

Privacy

The connector does not ask who you are and keeps no record of what you look up. See the Church Year section of our privacy policy.

Support

Questions or problems: hi@crossandcovenant.co. Security reports go to the same address. Cross + Covenant is a project of Modern Mustard Seed LLC, Kalispell, Montana.