The Sacred Paschal TriduumFriday of the Passion of the Lord

“He grew up like a sapling before him, like a shoot from the parched earth; He had no majestic bearing to catch our eye, no beauty to draw us to him.” (Isaiah 53:2)

Saint Irenaeus of Lyons comments on this verse from today’s Isaian proclamation (The Fourth Suffering Servant Song):

“I have shown from the Scriptures that no one of the children of Adam is as to everything, and absolutely, called God, or named Lord. But that he is himself in his own right, beyond all people who ever lived, God, and Lord, and King eternal and the incarnate Word, proclaimed by all the prophets, the apostles and the Spirit himself, may be seen by all who have attained to even a small portion of the truth. Now, the Scriptures would not have testified these things of him if, like others, he had been a mere man. But that he had, beyond all others, in himself that preeminent birth that is from the most high Father and also experienced that preeminent generation that is from the Virgin, the divine Scriptures do in both respects testify of him: also, that he was a man without comeliness and liable to suffering; that he sat on the foal of a donkey; that he was despised among the people and humbled himself even to death; and that he is the holy Lord, the wonderful, the counselor, the beautiful in appearance and the mighty God, coming on the clouds as the judge of all people — all these things did the Scripture prophesy of him. ” (Adversus haereses, 3)

Collect

O God,
who by the Passion of Christ your Son, our Lord,
abolished the death inherited from ancient sin
by every succeeding generation,
grant that just as, being conformed to him,
we have borne by the law of nature
the image of the man of earth,
so by the sanctification of grace
we may bear the image of the Man of heaven.
Through Christ our Lord.

Glory to the Father
and to the Son
and to the Holy Spirit:
as it was in the beginning,
is now, and will be forever. Amen