Our liturgy for Holy Thursday is so
well-known to us a Catholics, isn’t it?
We know that we are going to hear the Gospel about Jesus washing the
feet of the disciples. We know that we
are going to see the priest wash the feet of 12 parishioners just as Jesus
washed the feet of his followers so long ago.
Last year, when I worked the Kairos retreat in the federal prison
complex in Yazoo City, one of the leaders of that Kairos weekend asked me to
coordinate the foot washing ceremony for the team members in preparation for
that retreat weekend, using this same Gospel passage. And, of course, I took our very Catholic
approach. I had myself and a couple of
the ministers there wash the feet of the lay people. Later that afternoon, a Methodist minister
came up to me, telling me how the different spin that I took on the washing of
the feet really opened his eyes and touched him. I was intrigued by his comment; I asked him
what he was talking about. He told me
that he had never seen the foot washing done only by the clergy on this Kairos
weekend – usually the clergy and the lay people took turns washing each other’s
feet. What I had done made sense to him
in light of the Gospel, but he never looked at it in that way before. Very interesting, I thought, because in our
Catholic view of the Gospel, in the context of our Holy Thursday liturgy, I
would never have conceptualized it in any other way.
Jesus washes our feet. Jesus is the servant whom God sent to us for
our redemption. It could not be any
clearer. Yet, sometimes we are
uncomfortable having Jesus wash our feet.
I think I would get a lot of volunteers to be the foot washer in this
foot washing ritual, but you would not believe how uncomfortable it is for so
many of our parishioners to have their feet washed. Perhaps having Jesus wash our feet makes us
feel vulnerable and uneasy. Perhaps it is
still so shocking to us even after hearing this Gospel so many times. I don’t think the point of the Gospel is to
see Jesus wash the feet of others, but rather to see and feel and perceive the
way he washes our own feet the feet of each one of us.
One of my favorite poets is Gabriela
Mistral from Chile, a very devout Catholic, a third order Franciscan, and the
first person from Latin America, man or woman, to be awarded the Nobel Prize
for Literature. One poem of hers that
really sticks out in my mind is entitled “Piecasitos” or “Little Feet”. “Piececitos de niño, azulosos de frío, ¡cómo
os ven y no os cubren, Dios mío!” That
is the first stanza of the poem in Spanish.
It says: “The little feet of children, blue from the cold, how can they
see you and not cover you, dear Lord!”
Gabriela Mistral saw the cold, uncovered feet of the children of the
poor on the streets of Chile, seeing them with no socks and no shoes, seeing
them dirty, cold, and bruised. The poem “Piecasitos” addresses the reality of these
children from the compassion and love that both the poet and God would have for
such a sight. And although we might be
uncomfortable having Jesus wash our feet, just as we would be uncomfortable
seeing the cold, uncovered feet of poor children in the middle of winter, we
have compassion and love for Jesus, knowing that he is here to serve us,
knowing that our Lord is getting close to end of the journey that will
culminate in his death on the cross. Holy
Thursday and Good Friday are just a part of the story. The resurrection of Christ, the new life we
have in him, is the rest of the story that we celebrate at the Easter Vigil
mass and during the rest of our Easter season.
Those feet that are washed by Jesus today, our feet, are the feet that
will continue on the journey of faith, the feet that will be put into the
service of our Lord, just as Jesus came to us for service.
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