Reflection on Lectoring
How does a lector translate religious-sounding words into memorable and meaningful words? The kind of words that people in the assembly do not tune out? The kinds of words that resonate and connect with people’s real-life experiences? The kinds of words that make a difference?
It is not always easy. Not because lectors may lack public speaking skills. Not because the words sometimes appear in readings with complex sentence structures. When something is really important, doing it well always requires a significant commitment.
In a recent monthly meeting of our parish’s lectors, the group reflected on the purpose and importance of proclamation. They said, with the help of the Holy Spirit, lectors:
- Enhance the assembly’s ability to connect with the Scriptures in a personal way
- Enhance their hearers’ personal experience of God
- Enhance the dignity and solemnity of the liturgy
- Foster a shared experience of communal worship
These goals of the lector ministry are not easy to achieve. One way for lectors to fulfill these goals is to remember what they have in common with their hearers. We are all human beings struggling to understand, struggling to find meaning, struggling to find God. The Father recognized how hard these things are when he sent his own flesh-and-blood son to give his transcendent infinity a flesh-and-blood reality.
It is a lector’s humanity that translates religious-sounding words into words that other human beings can understand. Lectors and their hearers are people who struggle to understand, and struggle to find God. Even St. Paul admitted in 2 Corinthians 4:8 that we are “full of doubts.”
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First Reading - Exodus 32:7-11, 13-14
The Cost of Human Weakness
Several weekends ago in the first reading from Genesis, it was Abraham negotiating with God, urging him not to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah. In today’s first reading from Exodus, Moses is doing the negotiating. In both stories God relents - for a time.
Sodom was eventually wiped out, and the Jewish people eventually experienced the total destruction of Jerusalem when the Babylonians invaded. There can be a terrible cost to human weakness.
In today’s Reflection on Lectoring, we suggested that the Scriptures are all about real, flesh-and-blood people. People who struggle. People who succeed. People who fail. The Scriptures are all about the human condition and about how God is both compassionate and just. But above all, we find in the Scriptures a very personal creator to whom we can talk directly - when we do good, and when we sin terribly.
History is filled with terrible human failings. Today’s first reading is an example. How could people who have just been rescued from more than 400 years of slavery in Egypt turn their backs on the God who set them free? How could people be so ungrateful, so scared, so depraved? Perhaps we see in their worship of the molten calf just another example of our human weakness and God’s response.
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Second Reading - 1 Timothy 1:12-17
"Yes"
Today’s second reading is the perfect follow-up to the first reading.
Paul calls himself the foremost of sinners. He was a “blasphemer,” a “persecutor” of the followers of Christ, and displayed a completely “arrogant” behavior. It may be fair to say that his arrogance never completely left him. Human nature can be transformed by grace, but it is still human nature accompanied by human weakness.
There is one other human quality present in today’s second reading - humility. Paul acknowledges his sins. He also expresses his gratitude to God for trusting him with an important mission. God knew better than to expect perfection. He only wanted Paul to say, “Yes.”
When lectors and when those who commit themselves to their God-given purpose in life say, “Yes,” all those who see and hear them also see and hear God.
© George Fournier 2013
