Throughout the Lenten season, we have posted reflections for holy days and Sundays from this year’s Lenten reflection booklet, A Fast That Matters, written by Frida Berrigan, and excerpts from past booklets, like the one posted below, written by Nancy Small in “Everything is grace: Reflections for Lent 2016.” Click here to see all reflections as they are posted as well as links to other Lenten resources on our Lent 2024 webpage.
reflection for Holy Thursday, MARch 28, 2024
by Nancy Small
Exodus 12:1-8, 11-14 | 1 Corinthians 11:23-26 | John 13:1-15
Jesus rose from the table, took off his clothes and wrapped a towel around his waist. He then poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and dry them with the towel that was around his waist.
John 13:4-5
Today we’re given the gifts of the Last Supper and the washing of feet. After sharing a final meal with his disciples, Jesus washes their feet upon bended knee, a posture he knows well. How many times has he bent down to serve or heal others? Jesus has spent his life bending toward the will of God and the way of peace. Although he knows Judas is about to betray him, he responds not with anger but with an intimate act of love.
His example reminds us that bending is an important part of Christian nonviolence. In a world seemingly bent on retaliation, we are invited to bend, like Jesus, toward reconciliation and right relationship. The image of the worldwide Christian community bending in this way gives life to the words of Martin Luther King, Jr., who said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”
Washing the feet of the disciples is a christening of sorts. “Unless I wash you,” says Jesus,” you have no share with me.” (John 13:8b) He christens the faltering feet of those who will carry on after he is gone. Jesus caresses feet that have followed him into the unknown, feet that have stumbled, wandered and been tripped up. But through it all, they’ve continued on. These feet will fail him in the hours ahead. But for one brief and beautiful moment, they are bathed in the living water of God’s love.
The feet that Jesus washed sound a lot like ours, don’t they? We often don’t know where we’re going and we frequently falter. At times we fail or find ourselves tripped up. Yet we continue to put one foot in front of the other, believing that we come to know the way of nonviolence by walking it.
Reflection:
In what way are you invited to bend toward reconciliation and right relationship? What have you learned about the way of nonviolence by walking it?
Nancy Small, Pax Christi USA Ambassador of Peace, is a former Pax Christi USA national coordinator and former member of the National Council. She is a spiritual director, retreat director, and writer. She wrote the above reflection for the 2016 Pax Christi USA Lenten reflection booklet.
Cover illustration: Prof. emeritus Hans Schneider (Geyersberg), CC BY 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
How beautiful!
This reflection is a memory and a step to take. I see you washing feet before a crowd. Were we in Maine? I see you, Nancy, in your kitchen. I see Father Warren Savage bringing you into the Springfield Cathedral. This is both real, remembered, and imagined. It is hope for tomorrow. Jane Morrissey jfmorrissey@hotmail.com
Washing of the feet is such an intimate and humbling experience, which i have yet to be a real part of since i was a teenager. A part of the Holy Week, along with Chrism and Tenebrae.