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 Lamentations 1-3. 

We have already encountered tragic stories in our Bible reading. Get ready for the most heartrending verses in all of Scripture.

The Douay Rheims version of the Bible titles this book of the Bible The Lamentations of Jeremias (based on the Latin rendering of the prophet's name). Although the book was not written by the prophet, it has long been associated with him. In the Greek translation of the Old Testament known as the Septuagint, Lamentations (and Baruch) was appended to Jeremiah, like a continuation of the prophetic book. It is composed of laments (five of them) over the destruction of Jerusalem which, as we just read, Jeremiah both prophesied and lived through. They can be dated within a few generations of the prophet's lifespan, and use images comparable to his.  

The book is read in its entirety for the Jewish observance of the "Ninth of Av," commemorating the destruction of the Temple (both the Solomonic Temple by the Babylonians and the Second Temple by the Romans in 70 AD). (This year, the Ninth of Av began the evening of July 17 and ended on July 18.)

Start reading here.

In the 1560's Elizabethan composer Thomas Tallis (an unusually brave Catholic!) set the Holy Thursday readings from Book of Lamentations to appropriately haunting music. The refrain makes the constant appeal, "Jerusalem, Jerusalem, return to the Lord your God." Here is a modern setting of a portion of Tallis' work by one of my favorite choral groups:

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.