The Word Alive

Have mercy — I may be in rambling mode here. But while doing my morning walk, this idea that has been on my brain for a number of years reasserted itself, and I figured this might be the time to write about it. It’s about the call to intimacy in our relationship with God. I’ve written about this before, but here’s another way of looking at it. In Spanish and French, as many of us know, there are multiple terms for the word “you,” and which term you use is based on how close you are to whomever you are addressing and whether you are addressing one or more people. For example, if I were walking up to a group of colleagues at a conference, I might say, “Here you are!” In Spanish, I would say, ¡Ustedes estan aqui! Or in French, Que vous etes ici! Ustedes and vous are the plural form of the second-person pronoun “you.” If I were meeting one colleague whom I didn’t know very well, or an authority figure such as my boss or teacher, in Spanish I would say, ¡Usted esta aqui! and in French, Que vous etes ici! Usted and vous are the pronouns for the singular “you” in formal address. But if I were meeting my husband or my best friend, I would use the second-person familiar pronoun tu (essentially the same word in both French and Spanish). When you say tu, you imply a certain level of intimacy with whom you’re talking. This is why it’s so fascinating that when people pray in French or Spanish, they address God as tu, not vous or usted.
 

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Here is another, more arcane note that illustrates the same point in a rather odd way. I was thinking about working for our local Renaissance Faire, so I got a little book on how to speak as if I lived in Elizabethan England. The authors pointed out that back then, English also used two forms of the word “you,” and like the French, there was the formal-plural form, “you,” and the familiar-singular, “thee,” as in “A Closer Walk with Thee.” So I got out my Shakespeare, and sure enough, that’s how it played out. When a character was addressing someone close to him, he used “thee” and “thou.” When the more formal term was required, he used the word “you.”

The funny thing is, in standard American English, when we’re addressing God, we use what was essentially the formal way back when: almost all liturgical prayers address God as “you.” The only one that remains in the older, informal language is the Our Father — “hallowed be thy name.” We tend to think that’s formal, but that prayer is not, nor was it ever meant to be, a way of formally addressing God. The Lord’s Prayer and all of our prayers are meant to be addressed to a most intimate God.

So what does this have to do with lectoring? Well, how we see God and how that affects our relationship with God has a profound impact on how we carry out our ministry. If we see God as distant from us, we are going to have a harder time conveying God’s loving invitation to our listeners in a way that’s warm and embracing.

God calls us to intimacy. That is why Jesus came. That’s why we eat and drink his Body and Blood. Jesus literally becomes part of our very physical being. You don’t get closer than that.

This is not an easy thing to grasp, let alone embrace, for many of us. I know I have a very hard time seeing how God could love me. I know my faults. I know who I really am — and it’s not nearly as pretty as I want it to be. I have and continue to fall into the sins of perfectionism and absolutism, as if I could make myself perfect (and therefore acceptable). But we must recall the famous line from St. Paul (Rom 5:8): Jesus showed the full measure of his love for us by dying while we were still sinners. I am loved by a God who knows full well what a helpless schlub I am. But the good news is, if God doesn’t want me to sin, it’s not because God is up there waiting to zap me. It’s because God wants better for me. In the same way, when my daughter screws up, I want her to get her act together because it’s better for her.

Our ministry is about reaching out, in God’s own word, to our assemblies to bring them this very vital good news. And that’s a good thing to meditate on from time to time, whether we simply sit back with our eyes closed and breathe in God’s love or we amuse ourselves pondering the quirks of human language and how we express ourselves. ML

Anne Louise Bannon has received certificaton as a master lector through  the archdiocese of Los Angeles and has been lectoring for more than 20 years. She holds a master's degree in oral interpretation, the art of reading aloud.

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