PROCLAIMING GOD'S WORD - #7

Where do people find the holy? Medieval European Catholics found manifestations of the holy in pilgrimage sites. These places were privileged because the divine engaged people in their desire for healing and forgiveness Reformation Christians in the Methodist and Quaker traditions found the holy in the awakened heart and in their deepest selves. The holy was profoundly interior and personal to each individual.

Our contemporaries in North America indicate a yearning for the divine. Those who gather regularly as the church-at-prayer acknowledge that the holy is manifested both within the human heart and in the public forum. The Word of God awakens and stirs the human heart. It tutors the soul with the sentiments of God. The Word proclaimed reveals our connection with a tradition, a heritage stretching back four thousand years. We belong to a community of witnesses.

The Word proclaimed also is abundant grain spilling out from God's apron for us today. There are times when Catholics pick up the Scriptures alone and privately in order to ponder and pray over the Word of God. But this is not how we employ the word of God when the church is at prayer.

In liturgy the Word of God is not primarily a text, a series of word symbols printed onto a page. We do not ask individuals to open the Bible and bury their head silently into the text till everyone is done reading.

The Word of God is a dynamic elocutionary, verbal event. The lector, a significant lay ministry in all the churches, carries the lectionary in procession. Why? Because this book contains the word symbols that become the dynamic food for our souls when they are proclaimed in public. The Word of God was deemed so precious that lectionaries such as the Book of Kells were illuminated and beautifully adorned.

The lectionary deserves our reverence. That is why it is carried in procession with dignity and with care. The lector never bows when she or he carries the book. (In general those who bear the lectionary or the cross do not bow when they process among God's people). But others do bow before the lectionary when it is raised high. The bishop, priest, or deacon kisses the book reverently after proclaiming the Gospel. Gestures of reverence indicate that this precious object is the means by which God nourishes our hunger.

Lectors need to pay close attention to those who will receive divine nourishment. Most groups need a minute or so to sit down, to settle down, and to be receptive to the task of attentive hearing. It's like eating. One can attack a plate and shovel one's food in our one can do gracious, but not affected dining. So the lector needs to pay attention to the rhythm of the assembly and the pace of proclamation.

Lectors are not actors. Liturgy is not a play. Lectors are proclaimers. They need dramatic and public speaking skills to proclaim the Word. The general rule is this. The lector needs to be dramatic and dynamic enough to make the Word of God come alive, but not so dramatic to call attention to oneself instead of the Word. The lector is to minister God's nourishing Word. The skillful lector proclaims the Word with feeling and with passion.