In the Bible there are four major accounts of suffering, each of which provides material for reflection on the causes and meaning of suffering. These four accounts are: Isaiah's Songs of the Suffering Servant, The Book and Life of the Prophet Jeremiah, The Book of Job and, of course, the accounts of the Passion and Death of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

Lamentations is closely associated with the Book of the Prophet Jeremiah and laments the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple. Apart from the suffering whch he endured along with the Jewish people during that catastrophe, Jeremiah had already suffered a great deal because of his prophetic vocation and his dedication to the work of proclaiming the word of God. As Christians we see him as a figure of the suffering Christ.

In Holy Week, we read chapter 3 of Lamentations to help us reflect on Jesus' suffering.

The passage from Lamentations which we read today speaks of children dying of hunger in their mothers' arms. Some verses read almost like a newspaper account of terrible suffering such as we have seen resulting from widespread famine in the Horn of Africa.