LENT 2024: DAY 15 - Friday March 1

 

“Within the brief span of five days there took place two of the most famous feet washings in history. On the Saturday before Good Friday, a penitent Mary anointed the feet of Our Divine Savior; on Thursday of the following week, He washed the feet of His disciples. No defilement being in the Savior, His feet were anointed with fragrant spikenard; but so much of the dust of worldliness still adhered to the feet of the disciples that they had to be washed.

 

“Before the Paschal feast began, Jesus already knew that the time had come for His passage from this world to the Father.” (John 13:1)

 

The hour of departure is always an hour of quickened affection… Often our Blessed Lord had addressed His Apostles with the words: “My brethren”, “My sheep”, “My friends”, “Mine”, but in this Hour He called them His “Own”, as if to imply the dearest kind of a relationship. He was about to leave the world, but His Apostles were to stay in it to preach His Gospel and establish His Church. His affection for them was such that not all the glories of heaven in the act of opening to receive Him could for a moment disturb His warm and compassionate love of them.

 

But the closer He got to the Cross, the more they quarreled among themselves. “And there was rivalry between them over the question, Which of them was to be accounted the greatest.” (Luke 22:24) At the very hour when He would leave them the Memorial of His love, and when His tender heart would be pierced by the betrayal of Judas, they showed their contempt of His sacrifice by a vain dispute about precedence. He looked to the Cross; they disputed as if it did not mean self-abnegation. Their ambition blinded them to all His lessons about dominion, thinking a man was great because he exercised authority. This was the idea of greatness among the Gentiles…

 

“But he told them, The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them, and those who bear rule over them win the name of benefactors. With you it is not to be so; no difference is to be made among you, between the greatest and the youngest of all, between him who commands and him who serves. Tell Me, which is greater, the man who sits at table, or the man who serves him? Surely the man who sits at table; yet I am here among you as your servant.” (Luke 22:25-27)

 

Our Lord admitted that, in a certain sense, His Apostles were kings… but theirs was to be the nobility of humility, the greatest becoming the least. To drive the lesson home, He reminded them of the position He occupied among them, as Master and Lord of the table – and yet one in which every trace of superiority was killed. Many times He told them He came not to be served but to serve. To bear the burden of others and particularly their guilt was the reason he became the “Suffering Servant” foretold by Isaias. His previous words about making themselves servants, He now reinforced by example.

 

“And now, rising from supper, He laid His garments aside, took a towel, and put it about Him; and then He poured water into the basin, and began to wash the feet of His disciples, wiping them with the towel that girded Him.” (John 13:4)

 

The scene was a summary of His Incarnation. Rising up from the Heavenly Banquet in intimate union of nature with the Father, he laid aside the garments of His glory, wrapped about His Divinity the towel of human nature…; poured the laver of regeneration which is His Blood shed on the cross to redeem men, and began washing the souls of His disciples and followers through the merits of His death, Resurrection and Ascension.

 

St. Paul expressed it beautifully: “His nature is, from the first, Divine, and yet He did not see, in the rank of Godhead, a prize to be coveted; He dispossessed Himself, and took the nature of a slave, fashioned in the likeness of men, and presenting Himself to us in human form; and then He lowered His own dignity, accepted an obedience which brought Him to death, death on a Cross.” (Philippians 2:6-8)

 

 

(Chapter 37, pgs. 601-606)

+ QUOTES FOR LIFE