Holy Thursday: What Love Looks Like
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.
-John 13:4-5
This evening, with the celebration of the Evening Mass of the Lord’s Supper, we enter into the Triduum—the “Three Days.” While it’s tempting to think of these days as a sort of extended “Passion play” during which we seem to be trying to re-create or reenact the events from the final days of Jesus’ life, we need to avoid this way of thinking. That’s not what these days are really about.
Now, of course, we remember what Jesus said and did in these days.
We recall his words and actions at the Last Supper.
We reflect on his sufferings and his cruel, tortured death.
But this kind of remembering is passive. It doesn’t ask anything of us, beyond simply re-telling stories that we know only too well. Instead, what our tradition, what our liturgical celebrations call us to is a kind of active remembering in these days. So, instead of simply repeating time-worn tales, in these moments we are at the table with the disciples at that meal when Jesus washed feet and offered bread and wine. We walk with him and stand beneath the cross with Mary, the women, and the Beloved Disciple. We mourn and watch and wait for the light of Easter to penetrate darkness of that Holy Saturday night and the darkness of the world around us.
The Triduum—the “Three Days”—isn’t simply about stories. These days are a time for us to reflect on how well we have taken into our minds and hearts Jesus’ words and actions because, as the Second Reading and Gospel remind us, Jesus is asking something of us: as he has done, we must also do.
“Washing of the Feet” by Duccio in Museo dell'Opera del Duomo, Siena (1308-1311)
There’s a tendency to highlight the Eucharist on Holy Thursday. And that is appropriate, because this liturgy invites us to sit at the table with Jesus and the disciples. But the Gospel we hear tonight should guide our understanding of what we’re about this evening and even about how we understand the gift of the Eucharist.
John’s Gospel recounts that before he offered the bread and wine—the gift of his body and blood—to the disciples, Jesus took off his outer garment and tied a towel around his waist and did the unthinkable: he began washing the feet of those at the table. This is what servants would do. It’s an undeniable act of humility.
But it’s also an act of humility to have one’s feet washed. We don’t like having people do things for us, especially if it is something that we can do ourselves.
Perhaps this is part of the reason that Peter objects. Perhaps, it isn’t just that he’s in shock that Jesus would, literally, stoop to that level, but he doesn’t want something from him that he can do himself. After all, we all like our independence. But Jesus has no use for Peter’s independent spirit. It’s necessary that Peter humble himself, too.
But, “why,” we might ask, “was it necessary?”
It was necessary because Peter and the others needed to see and feel what love is. Jesus places himself in the role of a servant, yes, but he was also doing what parents do for their children and what children might someday do for their parents. There is tenderness and intimacy in what Jesus is doing. They—and we—needed to know what it feels like to be loved. They needed to know because this is exactly what Jesus was going to ask them to do for others. He’s asking the disciples—he’s asking us—to love each other. And this mandate to love—symbolized in foot washing—shapes how we should talk about the gift of the Eucharist, just as it informs how we should celebrate our liturgies during these three days.
Later in the meal, when Jesus blessed and broke the bread and passed around the cup, sharing the gifts of his Body and Blood, he was demonstrating that he was holding nothing back from these people whom we loved so much. He was offering them all of himself. But, just as with the washing of the feet, he challenged them—another mandate—to do for others what he himself was doing.
Jesus wasn’t inviting them to just remember. He was telling them—he tells us—to do what he has done.
In these days, Jesus is showing us what love looks like. As we continue our celebration this evening, open your mind and heart to how God is inviting you to love more deeply and to give yourself for the sake of others, without holding anything back.
O God, who have called us to participate
in this most sacred Supper,
in which your Only Begotten Son,
when about to hand himself over to death,
entrusted to the Church a sacrifice new for all eternity,
the banquet of his love,
grant, we pray,
that we may draw from so great a mystery,
the fullness of charity and of life.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God, for ever and ever. Amen.
-Collect for the Evening Mass of the Lord’s Supper
