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:

"The singer had entered deeply into the text, discovering its moods, its changes, no matter how subtle and shifting, and had convinced himself of the importance of these words and the emotions they convey. He had found in himself the same or analogous feelings and experiences."

He then adds, "If a secular performer, working with some unexceptional lyrics of love and longing, can show such dedication to his craft and achieve such a deep response from his material, can the lector in the Christian assembly be less committed?" How do we rise to this level of commitment? Should we begin viewing ourselves as performers, or even actors?

Fr. Jabusch cautions, "We don't add our own novel emotions or dramatizations into the text, but we must be able to interpret the richness that awaits us in the text and then convey that richness to our listeners." We must in his words, "Go all the way in your effort to be faithful to the text." Faithful to the text instead of to our performance. Making sure we don't cross that fine line of drawing more attention to ourselves than the message.

In the eyes and ears of our listeners, the word of God should always eclipse us, just as the song eclipses the great singer, the dance the great dancer. We must get out of the way and become transparent to our function, so our listeners can hear our reading through us without being distracted by us.

When we grasp and feel the reading's central point; the arguments, motives and attitudes of the people; its tone and spirit whether to comfort, warn, inform or give hope; its meaning in our own lives; the characters we identify with and where we can place ourselves in the scene... we'll then have something to pour out for our listeners to savor.

So the next time you approach the ambo, pray for abandonment. In your preparation time ahead, pray for power, conviction and sensitivity, openness, humility, gratitude and personal growth through the text you'll be proclaiming. Become a servant of his word by abandoning yourself to it; not a master of it by self-conscious performance. Your fellow parishioners will thank you for it, if not in the parking lot afterward, at least in their hearts.