First Reading: Wisdom 2:1, 12-22

¹ For they reasoned unsoundly, saying to themselves, “Short and sorrowful is our life, and there is no remedy when a man comes to his end, and no one has been known to return from Hades.
¹² ”Let us lie in wait for the righteous man, because he is inconvenient to us and opposes our actions; he reproaches us for sins against the law, and accuses us of sins against our training.
¹³ He professes to have knowledge of God, and calls himself a child of the Lord.
¹⁴ He became to us a reproof of our thoughts;
¹⁵ the very sight of him is a burden to us, because his manner of life is unlike that of others, and his ways are strange.
¹⁶ We are considered by him as something base, and he avoids our ways as unclean; he calls the last end of the righteous happy, and boasts that God is his father.
¹⁷ Let us see if his words are true, and let us test what will happen at the end of his life;
¹⁸ for if the righteous man is God’s son, he will help him, and will deliver him from the hand of his adversaries.
¹⁹ Let us test him with insult and torture, that we may find out how gentle he is, and make trial of his forbearance.
²⁰ Let us condemn him to a shameful death, for, according to what he says, he will be protected.”
²¹ Thus they reasoned, but they were led astray, for their wickedness blinded them,
²² and they did not know the secret purposes of God, nor hope for the wages of holiness, nor discern the prize for blameless souls;