by Gregory Warnusz
First Reading
When God’s people and their leaders were not living virtuously, the prophet Malachi criticized them for careless religious rituals, for cheating and for marriage to pagans. He predicts that the Lord will, like a craftsman melting gold and silver, “refine” the Levite priests of the temple.
LECTORS: Malachi was passionate, and his imagery is vivid: How will the Lord come to the temple? Suddenly. How will we work? Like the refiner’s fire or the fuller’s lye. (A fuller was a craftsman who cleansed and thickened cloth.) So bring out the vigor in these expressions. Also emphasize “to the temple” so that your listeners know the locus of the action.
Second Reading
Jews who became Christians lost the comforts of their old religion, including its speculations about angels. The Letter to the Hebrews reminds these converts that Jesus replaces and vastly improves upon everything they have given up. Here the writer argues that Jesus is superior to angels and closer to us than angels could be.
LECTORS: There’s a lot packed into a few dozen words. Before such a smörgåsbord of ideas, and absent any compelling link to the first reading or gospel, I’d choose one notion and try to emphasize it. My choice? Jesus’ solidarity with us. “Jesus likewise shared in them [human blood and flesh],” “he had to become like his brothers and sisters”
Gospel
The audience of Luke’s gospel were pagan converts. They were happy to become Christians but puzzled that they had inherited a religion that started among the famously exclusive Jews. So Luke shows them two representatives of the Jewish heritage proclaiming how that tradition was destined to be transformed by Jesus.