June 30, 2013
Reflection on Lectoring
“To know who you are is to be oriented in moral space, a
space in which questions arise about what is good or bad, what is worth doing
and what is not, what has meaning or importance for you and what is trivial and
secondary.”
This seminal passage from the book Source of the Self by Catholic philosopher Charles Taylor speaks
about personal identity. It speaks about
the “frame or horizon” in which a person is “capable of taking a stand.” It is the place in which a person can feel
personally confident about who he or she is.
It is also the place in which a person can stand secure in his or her
relations with others.
This frame or horizon is a place of bedrock beliefs,
commitment to a purpose in life, and a recognition of one’s dependence on God
and on other people. Confidence and
dependency. Sometimes these states are contradictory. Sometimes complementary.
Lectors stand in front of hundreds of people at Mass and by
their example confidently declare, “This is what I believe!” “The words I am proclaiming have truth and
value!”
At the ambo with humility and gratitude lectors publicly demonstrate
their commitment to the Scriptures. They
fulfill a calling, knowing that “lectoring is an important part of my purpose
in life because God has asked me to do this.”
Finally, whenever lectors share the Scriptures they know
they need God’s help to authentically proclaim his word. They also know they need their fellow
worshipers to pray and reflect with them, because the words they share are the
most important words ever written.
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First Reading - 1 Kings 19:16b, 19-21
The Source of Confidence
The prophet Elisha was a person who was confident in his dependence
on God. Even his name means “God is
salvation.”
For more than fifty years, Elisha’s career was filled
with miracles that helped ordinary people with everyday needs. His prophecies dealt with great battles and
significant political events. Through it
all, he knew that if God had called him to be a prophet, God would help him fulfill
the assignment.
In today’s first reading, Elisha, demonstrated a
remarkable degree of confidence and immediately stopped what he is doing when
asked by the prophet Elijah to be his successor. Forgetting about his fields, his twelve yoke
of oxen, even his plowing equipment, Elisha tells everyone to have a
feast. He has another job to do.
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Second Reading - Galatians 5:1, 13-18
The Source of Confidence (Part II)
Sometimes life might seem a whole lot easier if we just
had someone to tell us exactly what to do in every circumstance. It would be such a comfort if we had someone
else do our thinking for us. Who can
blame you when things go wrong if you are just following orders?
Paul’s letter to the Galatians was not a gentle
message. It was, in fact, his most
acerbic letter. He tells them point
blank, Christ did not die so that they should “submit again to the yoke of slavery.”
The slavery Paul is talking about involves looking for
salvation in Torah - the Jewish norms for proper behavior in all circumstances
of life. As a good Jew, Paul knew
Torah. He understood that it did a
wonderful job of defining sin. What it
could not do was save people from sin. Only Christ could do that. Only Christ could “set us free.”
This freedom is not of license to “gratify the desire of the flesh,” but the liberty to be fully
human, to be responsible for making right choices, to cooperate with God’s plan
of salvation.
© George Fournier 2013
