Read the Bible with Me!

Welcome to the Pauline Family's "Year of the Bible"! I'm reading the Bible clear through this year, and I invite you to read along with me. But first, let us pray: 

Everlasting Father,

All time belongs to you, and all the ages. In signs, in songs, in words of promise, you reassured your chosen ones, “I am with you; fear not.” You taught them through the prophets to trust that your saving deeds were not limited to the past.

When Jesus came, he fulfilled “all that was written in the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms.”

The Church has found him everywhere in these same holy books.

Help me to find Jesus in my reading today, to listen to him, and to follow him with all my heart.

Amen.

Today's chapters are Isaiah 53-55.

The most moving and mysterious of the Suffering Servant passages comes in Chapter 53. Here the Lord's beloved Son is clearly an individual who has not only been rejected, he has suffered innocently on behalf of others.

One of my favorite Bible stories quotes Is 53, giving us a good idea of the way the first Christians read these chapters. 

In Acts 8:26-40, we have the story of a Passover pilgrim from Ethiopia, a foreigner who could never become a Jewish convert because he was a eunuch. That didn't stop him from doing everything he could to honor God. He even had a scroll of the prophet Isaiah! (That's not a detail to just pass over; books were incredibly valuable. His Isaiah scroll was probably privately commissioned. But then, he was a royal treasurer.) This man was in his chariot, reading Isaiah 52 aloud ("Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter...") and wondering: "About whom is the prophet saying this?" Luke (author of the Gospel and of Acts) says it was the deacon Philip who, "beginning with this Scripture passage, proclaimed Jesus to him." Isaiah had said that when the Messiah came, eunuchs would no longer be excluded from God's people (see Is 56).  When they passed by some water, the Ethiopian treasurer asked a brave question: "What is to prevent my being baptized?" 

The death and restoration of the Servant bring about an overflowing abundance for the whole of God's people, an abundance we read about in Chapters 54 and 55. (Chapter 55, full of favorite passages of mine, seems to reflect the Ethiopian pilgrim being drawn in to the Holy One.)

Start reading here.

When I was an alto in my Catholic high school choir, I was introduced to this 17th century setting of Is 53:4. I never forgot it.  I managed to convince my little community schola to sing it last year for Good Friday (while we still had Sr Julia Darrenkamp to support the soprano line). (Good thing I still remembered the alto part!)

If you are looking for a solid but approachable companion to the Bible, I can wholeheartedly recommend A Catholic Introduction to the Bible: The Old Testament by John Bergsma and Brant Pitre. Although the authors are top-level Scripture scholars, they write for "real" readers. Notes include recent findings from archaeology and ancient manuscripts, and how each book of the Bible has been understood by the Church Fathers and used in Liturgy.