He Humbled Himself

Maundy Thursday

Footwashing has becoming a fad among Christians and Catholics, especially during retreats and camps where participants are encouraged to wash each other’s feet. It’s a dirty job because our feet are that part of our bodies which are most prone to getting soiled and smelly. But the aversion to this is not just on the part of the doer but also the receiver. Most of us are too embarrassed to expose our dirty smelly feet to others. The messaging of this action, however, is clear. This ritual is meant to express our willingness to emulate the Lord’s humility and heart for service. But I can’t help but think that it has become a tool of virtue signalling, declaring to the world “see how humble I am!”, the exact opposite of what the action is meant to signify.

And most recently, it has also been used as a means of propaganda in promoting a certain ideology - woke ideology, to be precise. In a recent advertisement played to millions of Americans who watched live the National Football League playoffs, it was a means of conveying a vanilla message of non-judgmentalism and universal acceptance of traditionally problematic moral issues under the guise of Jesus “gets us.” In a highly selective montage which included scenes depicting members of the LGBT community and abortion clinics, those who paid for this multi-million dollar advertisement would have wanted to showcase and proclaim the gospel of nice and tolerance while conveniently leaving out the essential call to repentance. The message was not so subtle for us to read between the lines: Jesus “gets us” translates as Jesus accepts us for who we are and despite what we’ve done. In other words, Jesus embraces both the sinner and the sin, and makes no demands of us to repent and change.

The action of our Lord in washing the feet of His disciples certainly demonstrates humble service but it is so much more than that. It points to two significant events of His life which form the basis of His work of salvation - the Incarnation on the one hand; and His passion and death on the other. When our Lord began to lovingly wash the disciples’ feet, His actions symbolised how He became a slave for us with His Incarnation. It also reminds us of the humiliating death He was about to undergo for our redemption. Why would He do this? He did this for our sake and for our salvation - He did this to save us from our sins and not leave us in our depraved condition. For if He had just tolerated our sinfulness, there would be absolutely no reason why the Word would become flesh and for Him to choose to die on the cross. He did it to redeem us from our sins, to liberate us from our sins, to save us from our sins.

Yes, we are to imitate our Lord in living out lives of love, service, forgiveness, and humility, as we reach out to help and sacrifice for one another. But more than that, we are to live with the certain hope that He has washed away our sins with His blood. We can no longer live our old lives trapped and wallowing in the murky muddy waters of sin. He has come to give us new life, to make us a new creation. He did not come just to wash our feet as an example of humble service, and then leave the filth of sin within us untouched. For that would be virtue signalling. No, He came to wash away our sins, to defeat sin not just by pouring clean water over it but by shedding His own blood on the cross.

Our Lord truly “gets us.” He truly understands our condition and our plight. He knows and He understands that left to our own devices, we are lost; left to us wallowing in our sinful lifestyle, we are heading in the direction of our own destruction; that a life without Him means that we are ultimately lost. Our Lord “gets us” by seeking the lost, healing the wounded, pardoning the sinner. If He has done this for us, so must we imitate Him in reaching out to others to offer them the forgiveness and salvation which is our Lord’s greatest gift to us.

Yes, the action of washing feet is indeed a profound expression of humility but in order that it remains a sign of humble service, instead of virtue signalling, we must never forget that this action is tied to both the Incarnation and the Paschal Mystery. This is how Pope Benedict XVI seeks to remind us:

"The greater you are, the more you humble yourself, so you will find favour in the sight of the Lord. For great is the might of the Lord" (3: 18-20) says the passage in Sirach; and in the Gospel, after the Parable of the Wedding Feast, Jesus concludes: "Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted" (Lk 14: 11). Today, this perspective mentioned in the Scriptures appears especially provocative to the culture and sensitivity of contemporary man. The humble person is perceived as someone who gives up, someone defeated, someone who has nothing to say to the world. Instead, this is the principal way, and not only because humility is a great human virtue but because, in the first place, it represents God's own way of acting. It was the way chosen by Christ, the Mediator of the New Covenant, who "being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross" (Phil 2:8).

Here, at this Mass of the Lord’s Supper, where our Lord instituted the Eucharist - the Sacrament of Love - we will witness again what our Lord did two millennia ago. He, who is Lord and Master, King of Kings, took off His Cloak of Royal Splendour and became a Servant. He washed the feet of those whom He had chosen to continue His Redemptive work. He gives Himself to us as food for the journey and went on to die on the cross. He showed us what we were chosen to do. On that night, our Lord enlisted His disciples and tonight, He enlists all of us to live lives of self-emptying Love for the world. To bear the name "Christian" is to walk humbly in this love in the midst of a broken and wounded world that is waiting to be reborn.