On Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday at week day masses during Holy Week, the First Reading is taken from one of the “Suffering Servant Songs” from Deutero-Isaiah. No one expected a messiah to suffer the kind of painful and shameful death Jesus did. That kind of death would have negated everything good he had done and said during His life in the eyes of the people of His time. But, Jesus had been vindicated through His resurrection. His followers came to believe that He had been in control of His fate all along. So, they looked back into their Sacred Scriptures and found a “Job Description” in those Suffering Servant Songs and the Book of Psalms like Ps. 22 and 69.
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