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In today's readings we focus on the passion of Our Lord. The Church has given us this first reading from the prophet Isaiah, a song about God's servant, ignored and even maltreated by others angry at his words. Although it was written 6 centuries before the time of Jesus, this passage is very evocative in the light of the sufferings Jesus had to undergo.

Psalm 21/22 also describes an individual lament of a person who, through his suffering, still trusts in God to save him and calls on others to praise him. .

In the gospel we have the account of the passion and death of Jesus in Mark's gospel. Mark's portrays Jesus as the Messiah (the anointed one) whose passion and death occurs in the context of the Passover. Jesus submits to his suffering as the Suffering Servant described by the prophet Isaiah. He is aware of what is happening to him. We have to be particularly alert to the mention of the Jews in the Passion narrative. When we hear the words "the Jews" it often refers to the Jewish leaders. The tendency in the past has been to impute the death of Jesus to the whole of the Jewish people, instead of to a group of the leaders.

This week let us reflect on the suffering and death of Jesus and their meaning for us. Jesus shows us that death is not the end. The joy of the resurrection is coming soon. Can we reflect on our own experiences of death or suffering and also experience the resurrection coming through it?