The Washing of the Feet

By Fr. Conor Donnelly

(Proofread)

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me. I adore you with profound reverence. I ask your pardon for my sins and grace to make this time of prayer fruitful. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

“Before the Feast of the Passover, Jesus, knowing that the hour had come for him to pass out of this world to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end” (John 13:1).

A very important scene in the Gospel of the Last Supper opens with these rather solemn words. You get the impression that something very important is coming, and of course this is the high point. This is what Our Lord has come for. We see the word “hour” mentioned, “knowing that the hour had come.”

All through His life Our Lord had referred to the hour: “Woman, my hour has not yet come” (John 2:4).

Now in these days and hours we find Our Lord using that word frequently: “Now has the hour come for the Son of Man to be glorified” (John 12:23). “It was about the tenth hour” (John 1:39).

Jesus, knowing that His hour had come, Our Lord is very aware that this is the great moment. The climax is coming in His life. Some very important things are about to take place. Our Lord's work is the work of Redemption and He lives intensity in His work up to the last moments.

“Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.”

So the story of the Last Supper opens with St. John referring to the great message that Our Lord had come to give, which is love. It's all about love, and it's all about fidelity in love.

“Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.” It's a message to us about fidelity in our friendship. Friendship based on love. It's a love to the end. We never give up on any of them.

And then the narrative changes. It says, “During the supper, the devil having already put it into the heart of Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon, to betray him...”

Having talked about love, now St. John turns to talk about the lack of love. Total contrast—mentions the devil very clearly. and Judas Iscariot, who is going to become the personification of the devil.

There's a deeper message here that Our Lord, “having loved His own who were in the world,” all of them, even Judas, “He loves them to the end.”

Christ also loved the betrayer. He wasn't excluded from the love of God. Right to the very end, Our Lord is going to love him.

These words also suggest that something important is coming. They're leading up to something.

“...Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come forth from God and was going to God, rose from the supper and laid aside his garments” (John 13:3-4).

There's a crescendo coming. We're being prepared. Our Lord has taken a contemplative gaze back over the whole of His life and His purpose and His mission, knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands.

He had come forth from God and was going to God. He's very aware of “the hour” and everything that is contained in “the hour.”

“Taking a towel, he girded himself and then poured water into the basin and began to wash the feet of the disciples and to dry them with the towel with which he was girded” (John 13:4-5).

There might seem to be a sort of an anticlimax here. We're being led to something very important. We’re coming to a crescendo—and then we find that Our Lord is going to wash feet. If you were to try to think of something more incongruous in the middle of the meal than washing feet, you might be hard pushed to find something. That seems so unusual and so remote and so out of place.

On this part of the ceremony—it has become part of the whole ceremony of Holy Thursday for all time—again, if you were to think of something that might be completely out of place in the church in the ceremony, washing feet could win the Oscar.

But that's what Our Lord is going to do: He's going to wash feet. On Holy Thursday evening, even the Pope is going to wash feet.

We used to organize an Easter retreat in Malaysia for many years. We hired a sort of a resort there, a few houses and a small group of twenty or so people, and I used to do this ceremony of the washing of the feet.

I remember the first time that we did it, I asked for volunteers. So it was a retreat for men and volunteers to see who might be willing to have their feet washed. Everybody put up their hands. All the men wanted to have their feet washed. So many, that we had to say, ‘Look, we'll just do the left foot this year and next year we'll do the right foot.’ So everybody gets a bit interested in this whole ritual and I must say it's a very beautiful ceremony.

You can see partly why Our Lord chose this. It's very graphic, very expressive. We go through all the external material things, as Pope St. John Paul wrote, “to the great spiritual messages, through material signs and symbols” (John Paul II, Theology of the Body, Human Love in the Divine Plan; Catechism of the Catholic Church, Point 1146).

So Our Lord washed the feet of the disciples and dried them with the towel with which He was girded. “He came then to Simon Peter, who said to him, ‘Lord, do you wash my feet?’ Jesus answered and said to him, ‘What I do now, you knowest not now, but you shall know hereafter.’ Peter said to him, ‘You shall never wash my feet’” (John 13:6-8).

Good old Peter again says the wrong thing at the wrong time in the wrong way. Our Lord suggests that the apostles again don't understand what it is He is doing and why He is doing it. “What I do now, you knowest not now, but you shall know hereafter.”

Our Lord is giving them a great example of service, of He who was “the Lord of lords and King of kings” (Rev. 17:14, 19:16). He glorifies service, because “Christ has come not to be served, but to serve” (Matt. 20:28).

He gives us a very profound message, that as followers of Christ and living out our Christian vocation in the middle of the world, this has to ultimately be a life of service—very relevant for fathers and families, mothers and families, children.

Everyone must learn how to serve, and everybody must be willing to do the most menial tasks. Fathers sometimes have to wash dishes and to lay tables and to mop floors—to teach children that this is what they have to do to be a great human person, to build a family, to build a home—to be ready to plug any hole, to do any job that needs to be done, to serve in whatever way we are needed to serve.

Peter realizes that this is a rather menial task: “‘You shall never wash my feet.’ And Jesus answered, ‘If I do not wash you, you shall have no part of me’” (John 13:8).

Our Lord is very clear. He talks face to face to Peter and calls a spade a spade. “You shall have no part of me.” This is something very important. ‘Either I give this example of service and serve you, otherwise nothing.’ It's a very key issue.

When we see the extent to which Our Lord goes to serve, we could try to build up this idea of a spirit of service. All our education, all our formation, has the goal of service because “Christ came, not to be served but to serve.”

“I am among you like one who serves” (Luke 22:27). “The greatest must be the servant of all” (Matt. 23:11).

We look for opportunities to serve. How can I help? What can I contribute? What can I do?—and find our glory and our dignity and our privilege in serving.

If we look back and see how there was a build-up to this whole action of Our Lord, we see the importance that He gives to this gesture: “Knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come forth from God and was going to God, he rose from supper, laid aside his garments”(John 13:3-4), and did something very important, and that was service.

Our greatest privilege is to serve. The Master shows us the way.

“Simon Peter said, ‘Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head” (John 13:9). And so Peter corrects himself, gives an example of how much his heart was with Christ.

Later on, after Peter denied Our Lord, possibly he thought back on these words, thought ‘how full of enthusiasm I was, emotion, what big words I said, what a big mistake I made!’

That's why “he went out, and wept bitterly” (Luke 22:62). These words are going to contribute to his awareness of his own weakness.

“Jesus said to him, ‘He who is bathed needs only to wash and he is clean all over. And you are clean, but not all’” (John 13:10). This was a reference to Judas Iscariot who was there. Our Lord also washed the feet of Judas Iscariot, the personification of the devil. He didn't suspend his service from the one He knew was going to betray Him.

Our Lord's service is a service to everybody. It's part of loving our enemies, part of the virtue of charity. We don't exclude anyone from our service. It's unconditional service.

“For he knew who it was who would betray him; this is why he said, ‘You are not all clean’” (John 13:11).

You get an impression here that all the time Our Lord has the big picture, knowing that “the hour” had come, knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands.

And yet in this great moment He gives this example of the ultimate, the most refined service. Our Lord could have washed their hands, their hair, their earlobe, but He washed their feet. We don't tend to pay very much attention to feet. We look at people's faces, their hair, their clothes. The last thing we look at is their feet.

But whenever feet are mentioned in the Gospel, something very important is taking place.

The leper who was cleansed came back... and “fell at the feet of Jesus” (Luke 17:16). It was a profound act of thanksgiving, a prostration. He didn't just shake Our Lord's hand and say, ‘Gee. thanks, that's great. Bye!’

“He fell at his feet.” It's a total gesture of thanksgiving. It's a total gesture.

Mary broke the jar of ointment and “poured it over the feet of Jesus and wiped his feet with her hair” (John 12:3), a profound gesture of affection.

“Now after he had washed their feet and put on his garments, when he had reclined again, he said to them, ‘Do you know what I have done to you?’” (John 13:12).

The Master Teacher is now about to break down for his students, little by little, so that they get the message, because, as always—“too dull of wit, too slow of heart” (cf. Luke 24:25)—there's a whole pile of things they don't get.

“‘You call me Master and Lord, and you say well, for so I am. If I, therefore, the Lord and Master, have washed your feet, you also are to wash the feet of one another’” (John 13:13-14).

Our Lord is speaking to them about humility—being ready to serve, being open to serve. This is what you have to do to other people. There's no room for thinking yourself superior. There's no room for thinking yourself better than other people; some forms of service of being too much below you.

This is what it's all about. You've got to be experts in serving. This is what it means to be Christ-like. You've got to grow to be more effective in your serving, so that you contribute what is necessary. You don't just do the good things; you do the right things. You think, How can I serve? How can I serve better? How can I be more effective, to improve the quality and the professionalism of our service, which often is ‘to serve unnoticed’ but to be very effective?

There was a story of a nail one time in a roof that held two planks together. This roof was the roof of a wonderful cathedral where there were beautiful mural paintings on the walls—masterpieces that had been painted there centuries before.

Many visitors and tourists used to come to that cathedral to admire all these wonderful artifacts, and the walls and the paintings got wonderful compliments.

But this nail was there in the roof. Nobody ever knew about the nail or noticed the nail. But the nail could hear all the wonderful compliments that the paintings were getting. But nobody ever complimented the nail. The nail got a bit tired of this, decided, ‘I'm going to get out of here.’

And so, the nail wiggled itself loose from the two planks, and it rolled down the ceiling and the roof, and it fell into a gravel path that was beside the cathedral. But then it began to rain and because of the rain and the force of the rain, the two planks became a bit loose, because the nail was no longer there.

The water began to seep in through the roof and the water began to run down the walls of the cathedral. It began to run onto the mural's paintings, and it began to wash them away, and so they got a bit destroyed.

Meanwhile, the nail had fallen down off the roof onto this gravel pathway. People were walking along the gravel path and the nail got more and more driven into the ground, into the mud beneath the gravel.

Beforehand, the nail was in its place. It was very useful. It was hidden, but it was performing a marvelous service. It was making the whole cathedral great. Now the nail was also hidden, but it was useless.

It’s the importance of being in our place, of serving where we're asked to serve, of seeing that this position where God has placed me, in this job, in this assignment, in this family, in this role, in this work—this is where I have been called to serve for all eternity.

This is where I have to perform my best service, to be good at particular things, a profession that I'm called to work at and to serve with; to provide my greatest contribution that increases over time.

I work out the process of my sanctity here. I do my greatest apostolate in and from this particular place. This is where God's grace will help me to a maximum degree.

“‘For I have given you an example, that as I have done to you, so you also should do. Amen, amen, I say to you, no servant is greater than his master, nor is one who is sent greater than him who sent him. If you do these things, blessed shall you be’” (John 13:15-17).

Holy Thursday—the great moment of the Institution of the Priesthood and of the Eucharist, the sacrament that's going to last for the whole of eternity.

Our Lord gives us this great message of service on Holy Thursday, as though placing that message in a position so that we never forget it. It’s something very important, the basis of everything. We've come to grow in humility that is expressed through our service.

“‘I do not speak of you all; I know whom I have chosen. But that the Scripture may be fulfilled, ‘He who eats bread with me has lifted up his heel against me,’ I tell you now, before it comes to pass, that when it has come to pass, you may believe that I am he. Amen, amen, I say to you, he who receives anyone I send receives me, and he who receives me, receives him who sent me” (John 13:18-20).

Solemn words. Our Lord also refers to the sending. He's going to send the apostles (cf. Matt. 28:18-20).

A great part of our service is through the personal apostolate that we fulfill. We've been sent to society and to certain people in society, to concrete places and souls. It's there we have to fulfill our mission. It's there we have to serve—transmitting doctrine, lifting up people around us, giving formation.

Christ showed the depth of His love through service. Sometimes the service that we give may be in big things—our professional work; big jobs that may be entrusted to us; maybe great missions over time that might take decades to be fulfilled.

But often the little services that we're called to do each day are small little things. Blessed Álvaro told us one time that he used to work every day with St. Josemaría. One time St. Josemaría noticed that the glasses of Don Álvaro were dirty. So he said, “Give me those glasses.” And he cleaned his glasses.

Then Don Alvaro said, “I noticed that St. Josemaría liked to clean my glasses. So on purpose I would not clean my own glasses, so that St. Josemaría would notice that my glasses were dirty and he would clean them for me—until one day, he said to me, ‘You know it's lucky for you that I clean your glasses, because if it wasn't for me, nobody else would clean your glasses. But I'm not going to clean them anymore.’”

That was the end of the glass cleaning saga. But with that, he showed this little detail of service that St. Josemaría performed with him.

Sometimes the little favors, the little things we do for people. ‘Can you buy me that thing when you're in the shop?’ ‘Can you do me that little favor?’ All those little things can be very important. St. Josemaría used to say that in the early 1930s, he tried to grow in friendship with people by doing many little favors for them.

Often we find a way into people's hearts by the little things we do for them. We go out of our way, we go the extra mile, we're thoughtful. We say yes. “Love is deeds, not sweet words” (Josemaría Escrivá, The Way, Point 933).

And so, when people ask us to do something—‘Can you do this?’ ‘Can you fetch that?’ ‘Can you solve that problem?’—in principle, our answer has to try and be yes, because we've come to live a lifetime of service.

If we say no—no to this, no to that, and no to something else—it's as though we're not here to serve. ‘I only do what I feel like doing’ or ‘I only do what I want to do’ or ‘I do the work that I like doing and nothing else.’

We're here to serve in all senses, to make our life a constant service to others. “As I have done to you, so do you also to others” (John 13:15).

Sometimes we serve with our work, with our physical action. Sometimes we serve with our prayer. In The Way we're told that often the greatest charity is prayer—to pray for people, to keep them in mind, to bring people forward with our prayer. God wants the service of our prayer, the constant petition, for the souls that are around us.

There may be people that are far away, and they are not immediately present to us. Possibly, the physical services or material services are nonexistent. But our prayer can be a great service. Pray for the Holy Father, pray for the Church.

There may be times in our life when we're sick or incapacitated, or one day we'll be elderly, and there'll be a whole pile of material things or physical things we just cannot do. But the incense of our prayer may rise very high.

The Psalm says, “The prayer of the humble pierces the clouds” (Sir. 35:21). Great service.

Our Lord served on the Cross. If on some occasion Our Lord visits us with some particular cross, that's where He wants us to serve. From the Cross, Our Lord didn't feed 5,000 people, or perform any of the other wonderful miracles that He performed, but He served us by being there.

If this is your will, Lord, then it's my will also (cf. Luke 22:42). We serve by having the concern of the Good Shepherd that watches out for the lost sheep (John 10:14-17, 1 Pet. 5:2-4), that counts the sheep from time to time.

Often our affection is expressed through service—always having time for people. Now if we see that somebody is in need of a pair of ears, they need a bit of time, a bit of heart, they need someone to listen to them, they have a problem, then we stop what we're doing, we change our plans, we be available.

We always have time for people, we're never too busy. We can readjust our schedule. Some things can wait because souls are the most important. That's what we're here for.

When Our Lord saw the widow of Naim coming out with that funeral of her son, He was entering a town with a lot of people. He was busy, He was full of popularity, He was going to do a lot of things in that place.

But when He saw the widow of Naim, He stopped, went over to her, went to the stretcher, didn't just say nice words. He touched the stretcher; He worked a wonderful miracle. He was available; changed His plans completely (Luke 7:11-17).

Sometimes the greatest service can be through a smile. It can lift up situations, or a word of encouragement. Sometimes that kind word of encouragement may make all the difference to somebody around us.

The Holy Spirit may be there. We serve through knowing that word or gesture which only people who love know is important.

There are certain key moments in our life where Our Lord gives us the opportunity to say that word, or perform that gesture, that may mean the world to people. That little phone call to know how you are. ‘How did your exam go?’ Or that little wave which shows that ‘I'm here for you’ as you go out the door or out the gate. ‘You're part of me. I'm with you.’ It's a heart-to-heart relationship.

Sometimes it's just passing the salt before somebody asks for it. It means we're attentive to others around us. Or they need a jug of water—small little things. People notice. This person is thinking of me. This person has foreseen the needs that I have.

That spirit of service needs a habitual disposition to forget about ourselves. We live for the others. We solve all our problems by thinking of the others.

We become the happiest people in the world by having that sort of service that Our Lord teaches us about on Holy Thursday: the service of charity.

“When a person really lives charity,” says St. Josemaría in The Forge, Point 683, “there is no time left for self-seeking. There is no room left for pride. We will not find occasion for anything but service!”

That service can take on different forms and different moments. In the night-time period or time to go to sleep, maybe we serve by not making noise; by just being quiet. We serve by sleeping when everybody else is sleeping, so we're not playing music or banging doors or making loud noises that keep everybody else awake when they should be sleeping. Great service—just to be quiet.

“There is no greater self-mastery,” he says, “than to make oneself a servant—the willing servant of all souls” (J. Escrivá, The Forge, Point 1045).

“In the whole context of the Passion,” we're told in The Way of the Cross, “this help” (of Simon of Cyrene) “does not add up to very much” [helping other people to carry their cross].

“But for Jesus, a smile, a word, a gesture, a little bit of love is enough for him to pour out his grace bountifully on the soul of his friend. Years later, Simon's sons, Christians by then, will be known and held in high esteem among their brothers in the faith. And it all started with this unexpected meeting with the Cross.

“‘I went to those who were not looking for me; I was found by those that sought me not’ (Isa. 65:1). At times the Cross appears without our looking for it: it is Christ who is seeking us out. And if by chance, before this unexpected Cross which, perhaps, is therefore more difficult to understand, your heart were to show repugnance…don't give it consolations. And, filled with a noble compassion, when it asks for them, say to it slowly, as one speaking in confidence: ‘Heart: heart on the Cross! Heart on the Cross!'” (J. Escrivá, The Way of the Cross, Fifth Station–Simon of Cyrene helps Jesus to carry the Cross).

The news from the angel Gabriel to Our Lady that Elizabeth had conceived was an unexpected piece of news (Luke 1:36)—perhaps an unexpected cross; maybe Our Lady had other plans. Maybe she and Joseph had planned to do something special.

But as soon as she heard about Elizabeth, she placed herself at the service of Elizabeth, even with difficulty to go into the hill country. She stayed there not three hours or three days, but three months (Luke 1:39, 56). It was a serious service, a serious contribution.

Mary, from our contemplation of you these days, and of your service ultimately at the Cross, help us to see the better ways that we can learn to serve, and so to be more effective just as you were.

I thank you, my God, for the good resolutions, affections, and inspirations that you have communicated to me during this meditation. I ask your help to put them into practice. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

EW