Brant Pitre’s excellent lecture The Jewish Roots of Holy Week is chock full of wonderful insights and details of information. I pulled some of it for my homily tonight.

What I found especially moving was the clues as to the hymn they sang after the Passover and before they went out to the Mount of Olives.

Pitre notes from the Jewish rubrics for worship that the psalm the would have sung was most probably Psalm 116–a thanksgiving psalm.

First of all, it is super cool that this is the same psalm chosen for the Mass of the Lord’s Supper–therefore at the Mass of the Lord’s Supper we sing the same psalm today that Jesus would have sung with his disciples after the Passover.

Here it is:

R.. (cf. 1 Cor 10:16) Our blessing-cup is a communion with the Blood of Christ.
How shall I make a return to the LORD
for all the good he has done for me?
The cup of salvation I will take up,
and I will call upon the name of the LORD.
R.. Our blessing-cup is a communion with the Blood of Christ.
Precious in the eyes of the LORD
is the death of his faithful ones.
I am your servant, the son of your handmaid;
you have loosed my bonds.
R.. Our blessing-cup is a communion with the Blood of Christ.
To you will I offer sacrifice of thanksgiving,
and I will call upon the name of the LORD.
My vows to the LORD I will pay
in the presence of all his people.
R.. Our blessing-cup is a communion with the Blood of Christ.

You should listen to Brant’s whole lecture and his exposition of every detail of this psalm, but here is the one that got me really interested and, to be honest, a little emotional.

It is the lines, “Precious in the eyes of the LORD is the death of his faithful ones, I am your servant, the son of your handmaid.”

Packed into this line is Jesus’ realization that he is about to die, and that this death is precious in the eyes of the LORD. Second, he recognizes that he is the suffering servant as prophesied by Isaiah.

But the kicker is that he is singing about his mother. He is the son of the LORD’S handmaid.

Who is the handmaid of the Lord but Jesus’ own mother Mary who says at the Annunciation, “Behold the handmaid of the Lord. Let it me unto me according to your word.

Then Jesus sings, “I am the handmaid of the Lord.” And from there he goes the Garden of Gethsemane where he will say, “Not my will, but thine be done.”

Just as Mary the Lord’s handmaid said, “Let it be to me according to your word” so the Son of the Handmaid says, “Let it be to me according to your word.”

Beautiful.

Brant’s lecture is available at Catholic Productions along with much, much more excellent Catholic Bible stuff.