...except the one person who may be desperate to hear, or benefit greatly from what your assigned reading TODAY has to say. (Read On)

As lectors, we can develop “leprous spots” on our minds and hearts that diminish our delivery of God’s word to our listeners . . . (Read On)

St. Paul knew that the words he spoke were not where his message started, but with a demonstration of the Spirit; a wordless revealing of the way God was working in his life . . . (Read On)

In Mark 4:21-22a, Jesus asks, "Is a lamp brought in to be placed under a bushel basket or under a bed, and not to be placed on a lampstand?" The ambo is that lampstand from where our hidden emotions can be made visible,

As lectors, let us always remind ourselves that each time we proclaim God's word from "just the ambo," typically just a few feet from "The Altar," we are literally standing on Holy Ground.

When we think we're all prepared to proclaim our assigned Sunday readings, are we sure? What about the Prayers of the Faithful we're also assigned? Don't they deserve ample preparation as well?

Discernment should not only be exercised with new ministers, but veterans as well. Our enthusiasm about a ministry may die down over time, or we may feel burned out; just a few reasons why discernment should be ongoing.

We've all heard people say, "Each time I read the same Scripture, I always get something new from it." Dig for that something new. Then convey its freshness from the depths of your heart.

To succeed at any endeavor, we need to visualize our success in advance: a corner hi-rise office, promotion, sale of a business, running a marathon, etc. And for lectors, this exercise can also bear fruit.

If we get too familiar with a reading where we feel we've "got it" and no longer need to study it, we risk proclaiming from the top of our heads instead of the depth of our hearts, and lose our listeners.

One of the most striking examples of the ultimate lector is from the Book of Nehemiah, describing how the prophet Ezra's deep knowledge and dedication to the Torah resulted in a delivery so powerful that he captured the full attention of the people,

In a parish ministry of thirty-some lectors, I observed a typical bell curve pattern where a very few at the beginning were great proclaimers, another few at the far end were terrible, and all the others fell somewhere in between.

There's a tie-in with the religious practices of post-exilic Jewish priests in the Book of Malachi and the Ministry of Lector. Temple worship was out of hand and filled with abuses. Priests were offering animal sacrifices from sick and diseased stock vs. healthy unblemished "prized" lambs as their ancestors once did. They were placing defiled food on the Lord's altar. 

In his compelling book, The Spoken Christ (Crossroads 1990), Fr. Willard Francis Jabusch gives an enlightening comparison with a lector and a captivating singer who enflames the hearts of his listeners:

What gives the lector a well-trained tongue goes far beyond speaking skills and knowledge of Scripture. We proclaim God’s word as an invitation to our listeners, not as a monologue or a soliloquy. We speak with them, not to them or at them.  

In his engaging book, The Joy of the Gospel, Pope Francis puts great importance on the diligent preparation of a preacher's homily in order to support and advance The New Evangelization.  And much of his message applies to both lectors and listeners in the pews as well.

"Google" the term, Lectio Divina, and you'll find numerous explanations on this method of reading and praying with the Holy Scriptures.  However, one of the easiest-to-use methods among all of these is nicely explained by Fr. James Martin in this Video.

One of my great lay teachers once said that when we proclaim the readings to the people, there's a fine line between where their attention is drawn - - to God's Word or to ourselves.

Our love and hunger for the Scriptures, our faith in Christ's presence in them, and our conscious preparation before we approach the ambo can't be acted out.