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We may treat the washing of the disciples feet as some negligible symbolic action, especially as we are tempted to tune out during that particular part of the celebration of the Holy Thursday liturgy, having experienced it year after year. But it is in fact the blueprint and luminous inner meaning of how Jesus "loved his own in the world and he loved them to the end". It revealed the reality that underlied both the Passion and the Eucharist.
So, during supper,
fully aware that the Father had put everything into his power
and that he had come from God and was returning to God,
he rose from supper and took off his outer garments.
It might otherwise have seemed that the Passion was something that was done to Jesus against his will. But it was his choice to obey the Father, to take off the outer garments of his mortal life on the cross. It was his choice to humble himself even to the point of becoming the sacrificial lamb, and therefore also the bread and wine we receive in Holy Communion. The world thought it was taking from Jesus when it stripped him of his clothing and nailed him to the cross. But in fact he was acting with complete sovereignty to hand himself over into our hands.
He took a towel and tied it around his waist.
Then he poured water into a basin
and began to wash the disciples’ feet
and dry them with the towel around his waist.
We see Jesus acting out symbolically what Paul described in his letter to the Philippians, that "though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross" (see Philippians 2:6-8). What began by the infinitely transcendent God stooping down to visit his creatures in the incarnation reached the "end" for which it was begun. The true meaning of the fact that Jesus "came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many" (see Matthew 20:28) was now being revealed. The one of whom John the Baptist said, "the strap of whose sandal I am not worthy to untie" (see John 1:27) now washed the feet of the disciples.
Peter said to him, “You will never wash my feet.”
Jesus answered him,
“Unless I wash you, you will have no inheritance with me.”
The humility shown by Jesus brings full attention to the filth with which we have dirtied our feet and to our own unworthiness before the gift Jesus desires to give us. Yet, nevertheless, we must allow how to clean us as he desires, both because we need it and because it is a gift he himself desires to give. The Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture summarizes this fact in a useful way:
The foot washing signifies Jesus’ loving action on the cross, and Peter must yield to Jesus’ loving action in order to share in Jesus’ life, which the cross makes possible.¹
We too must yield to Jesus' loving action in order to share in Jesus' life. We do this primary in our reception of the sacraments. We think in particular of the Eucharist, since this story of the foot washing in John's Gospel parallels the story of the institution of the Eucharist in the synoptics. This is the reason why this reading is given for Holy Thursday, since it commemorates both the institution of the Eucharist and of the priesthood.
Do you realize what I have done for you?
You call me ‘teacher’ and ‘master,’ and rightly so, for indeed I am.
If I, therefore, the master and teacher, have washed your feet,
you ought to wash one another’s feet.
Do we realize what Jesus has done for us, by giving his Church the gift of the priesthood, and through it, the Eucharist? His priests are called to view their own ministry as a washing of the feet of their peoples. But the washing of the feet is not given only for priests to imitate. We are all meant to live lives characterized by this kind of humble service. We are called to become what we receive in the Eucharist. And this can only happen to the degree that we in turn become bread for others. We have our own feet washed in order that we might serve.
I have given you a model to follow,
so that as I have done for you, you should also do.
--
1) Martin, Francis; Wright, William M. IV. The Gospel of John (Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture): (A Catholic Bible Commentary on the New Testament by Trusted Catholic Biblical Scholars - CCSS) (p. 235). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
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