What order do you have in mind? (I can think of several ways of interpreting “chronological/book-by-book.”)
This happens, but doesn’t become apparent until you go through at least a complete cycle of Year 1 (daily) and Year A, B, or C (Sundays). It becomes even more apparent after a complete 3 year following (which would consist of Year 1 and 2, and A, B, and C.
One difficulty in this particular case is that there is relatively little in the canonical gospels that follows the Resurrection. Suppose that we were devising a weekday lectionary for the several weeks of the Easter season; also suppose that a guiding principle for the gospel readings were to limit ourselves to that material. Since there isn’t very much of it, we could have a lot of repetition, we could have very short gospel readings, or maybe we could try some of each approach. In any case, the result would look strange.
**The 50 days of Easter has some of the richest gospel readings, that do, essentially apply to the post resurrection period. If you recall, right up to the resurrection (and even immediately following the resurrection (recall the Road to Emmaus and Thomas wanting to see and touch the wounds of Christ), they were still piecing together what Christ had shared with them during the ministry, and how (even though they didn’t realize it at the time) it confirmed the resurrection. **
So I can easily see this practical reason for not being “chronological,” although I also imagine that it’s potentially fruitful to consider earlier events and sayings in light of the Resurrection.
One tip may to be study the arrangement of the lectionary for a better sense of its order.
For example,
“Weekday Masses for Years I & II in the Seasons of Lent and Easter” (in the 1998/2002 United States edition)–I like this website–has a convenient listing of citations. After the Octave of Easter, the gospel readings for weekdays are almost all from before the Resurrection (the exceptions are at the end of the season), with particular emphasis on John 3, John 6, and John 13-17.
