He began to wash the disciples’ feet

28 MARCH (Jn 13,1-15)

Jesus ends his earthly life in the Upper Room, revealing to his disciples the secret of all his public life. It is totally enclosed in a gesture: the washing of the feet. In this work, Jesus reveals the essence of true religion. This essence has only one name: charity, love, piety, compassion, mercy and help.

However, the one of Jesus is not the gesture of a man. It is the work of God. God, who out of love had created the whole visible and invisible, material and spiritual universe, angels, men, animals, plants and every other being; now he sees that his wonderful universe is stained, soiled, made unrecognizable by the sin of the creature He had made in his image and likeness, and also by the sin of the other creature, the one made of pure spirit by him. No creature might bring this beautiful divine painting back to the beauty of its origin, but he himself.
Here is what God, the Creator does. He undresses himself of his omnipotence, lordship, divinity, and wears the clothes of a humble servant and begins to recompose, rebuild, remake, clean and renew his creature. God himself, washes and purifies, renews and sanctifies his work. By doing so, he teaches his disciples what they must do until the end of time: being the rebuilders of his creature, becoming the renovators of the human heart, the illuminators of his conscience, the purifiers of his spirit and his soul sanctifiers, through a work of true service and the healers of his body. The whole man, in all his parts, must be re-mixed by them in order to give him a new shape, new breath of life, new essence and new truth.

They might not do this but as renewed, sanctified and elevated men, constantly immersed in God. They must draw from God every force, every grace, every truth, every skill in this art and science of renewal that is only divine and never human. This is the folly of many men of the Church: they wash the feet, but not the heart; they take care of the body but not the soul, heal the external, but not internal wounds. Instead, Jesus washes the feet as a sign, visibility of the washing of the soul, spirit, conscience, mind, will and all other inner faculties.

Before the feast of Passover, Jesus knew that his hour had come to pass from this world to the Father. He loved his own in the world and he loved them to the end. The devil had already induced Judas, son of Simon the Iscariot, to hand him over. 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. 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. He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, “Master, are you going to wash my feet?” Jesus answered and said to him, “What I am doing, you do not understand now, but you will understand later.” Peter said to him, “You will never wash my feet.” Jesus answered him, “Unless I wash you, you will have no inheritance with me.” Simon Peter said to him, “Master, then not only my feet, but my hands and head as well.” Jesus said to him, “Whoever has bathed has no need except to have his feet washed, for he is clean all over; so you are clean, but not all.” For he knew who would betray him; for this reason, he said, “Not all of you are clean.” So when he had washed their feet (and) put his garments back on and reclined at table again, he said to them, “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. I have given you a model to follow, so that as I have done for you, you should also do.

Now the disciples know what to do. They must be the restorers of the work of God ruined by sin, polluted by evil, shattered by wickedness, torn by foolishness and ignorance and defaced by idolatry. Theirs is a perennial work. It lasts for all the days of their lives. Every day many torn men will be presented before them and they will have to get them anew, as if they were coming today out of the hands of the Almighty Creator. Rather, they will have to redo them in an even greater, more wonderful and more holy way. This is the apostolic, priestly and Christian ministry.

Virgin Mary, Mother of the Redemption, Angels and Saints teach us this science.