Gospel: John 13: 1-15
The four Gospels provide us with two important actions that take place this night of Holy Thursday. The first is the celebration of the Passover meal and Jesus offering bread and wine as his body and blood, urging the disciples to do this in remembrance of him. The second is Jesus stooping down to wash the feet of the disciples, an action not even a slave would perform. In performing this action, Jesus tells the disciples that as he has done so also we must do.
Whereupon Christians turned both events into ritual actions performed in sanitary, antiseptic conditions. Rather than actually becoming an offering of our life for the sake of others, in nourishing people at table, we instead made what Jesus did a mere vicarious ritual. We did the same to the action of the washing of feet, here only doing this ritual once a year. It is much easier to do this than actually wash the feet of other people, to care for others in the most base needs people have.
So, as we gather to reenact these rituals yet again may we be reminded that the rituals are not the real, that what Jesus asks of us is to live and die as he did, to become a humble servant of others as he did. May these rituals actually spur us to such action. May they not be empty shows and displays devoid of any real substance. May we truly become the body and blood of Christ on earth, taking up a towel and basin to serve a starving world in need of mercy and love.
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