Readers.

If as a junior high student, you do not dread speech more than any other subject—and maybe even like it a little—you might just be recruited to fill an empty slot on the high school speech team. With those stellar credentials, you might then be asked to be a reader at your older sister’s wedding. And for the rest of your life will remember the very first time you proclaimed the Word of God in the midst of an assembly . . .

It was dreadful. The good news was I didn’t pass out. But I was no Ezra, he who read God’s Word plainly for hours on end. I was a hyperventilating wreck from start to finish, such that by the time my sister and her husband had exchanged their marriage vows, I had vowed I would never, ever read in church again.

Years later I was a young mother in a new parish, a warm and welcoming small community with a gentle pastor. And, as it turned out, not enough lectors. But a vow is a vow. So I ignored Fr. Leo’s first bulletin note. And the next. But afterthe third week, when it was obvious that no one was dying to be a lector, I rang the rectory. And got the job.

Until my dying day, I will remember the second time I proclaimed the Word of God in the midst of an assembly. It didn’t kill me!

“You’ve done this before,” Fr. Leo said after Mass. (Had he heard?!) And the kindest of ushers said, “I can never hear when I am in the back of church, but I could hear every word you said.” That mattered a lot, because every word I said was “the Word of the Lord.”

I had done that before. I could and would do it again. Again and again, at least a little nervous every single time. Because it is a fearful thing to know the power of Scripture to transform listening hearts. Just a word or phrase. God’s Word, not mine.

So imagine my surprise when I met an elderly parishioner in the post office one day. He never saw me outside of Sunday Mass and had to verify my identity: "Are you the one who stands up and talks in church?” I smiled and said yes. “You are so smart!” he exclaimed. “You really know what you are talking about!”

He was out the door and on his way before I could defer the praise. I didn’t write those words, I just read them. They are not just any words, they are God’s words. One day a long time ago, Jesus stood up in the synagogue to read this Word. The Spirit of the Lord was upon Jesus, and it is upon us too. Jesus was God’s anointed, and we are too.

Stellar credentials God gives us in baptism. Readers and proclaimers of the Word each and every one of us. So that this day and until our dying day, Scripture may be fulfilled in the world’s hearing.

Mary Stommes. Taken from Give Us This Day.

Mary Stommes is an oblate of St. Benedict and editor of Give Us This Day.