Become the salt in your surroundings and watch your life change. Seek to flavor the needs of others with your salt and watch, as Isaiah promised the Israelites, “your light break forth like the dawn.” (Read On)

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

The events of Zebulun and Naphtali prophesied by Isaiah relate to our lives today in many ways. Let us remind ourselves of our own experiences of darkness, where the Lord’s light came to shine on us. (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)

When someone says to us after our reading, "Great Job!" or "You really nailed it up there," these accolades can be dangerous to our health as a lector when we bask in them too much . . . (Read On)

... for its beginning, not its ending... In the secular world, Christmas ends on December 26th. Trees are thrown out to the curbs, people rush back to the stores to return unwanted gifts, and business-as-usual gets back on motion that make the celebration of the birth of Christ officially over. 

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)

When two lectors are assigned the Sunday readings and one of them doesn't show, is it all that catastrophic? In some parishes it may not be a big deal to simply grab any lector in the pew 10 minutes before Mass; but in others with higher standards, it's a practice ito avoid.

What do we cling to today that dilutes our relationship with Christ? What “Isaac” distracts us from focusing on him full-time. Could we sacrifice this lamb up on the altar as Abraham did with his son?

To be a modern-day remnant as the devotees of God were in Zephaniah’s time is a daunting challenge. But when we decide to be part of this remnant, we’ll be rewarded as the Beatitudes of Jesus promise. (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.

My college teacher of a salesmanship class once said, “The strongest human motivation is the desire to be superior. And if we’re naive enough to judge our superiority or equality by what we show on our backs or in our driveways, then we (literally) pay the price.

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.

There are many things we can do to serve God, but not necessarily the one good thing God wants us to focus on. We're asked to do this and that. We run from one ministry to the next. Tuesday here, Sunday there. And who's laughing at us more than Satan!

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.

If you’re planning a lector meeting soon, do a little research first, talk with several lectors face to face and get a good feel for their sentiments and areas of need. Then put something together . . . just for them.