Holy Foot-Washing, Jesus!

Ten years ago I was a candidate, one of the adults to be confirmed at the Easter vigil, and I was to have my feet washed on Holy Thursday. This ritual is a commemoration of Jesus' washing of the apostles’ feet before his final Passover meal, the night of the Last Supper.

We, the catechumens and candidates, were told to wear easily removable shoes so we could quickly free our feet for the washing. A priest would be pouring rose-petaled water on our toes. Sometimes, Sister Ruth told us, the feet are kissed after being washed.

Whoa.

I thought of my crusty, rough-skinned feet—closer to hooves, really, the overgrown nails, callouses, corns, and other unnameable vegetables growing down under, wondering if I could stand to expose such horrors to a pedicurist so that I wouldn’t create an ordeal for whoever was to bear the unlucky chore of having to view, much less touch, my feet.

This was a dilemma for several of us candidates (the women, at least). We each seemed sure that our feet were the worst looking specimens of human flesh on God’s green earth, and we carefully planned our own personal cures: an extra-special pedicure at a nail salon, witch hazel and wax, fungal ointments, that Dead-Sea mud that folks use for facials, minty foot creams. My choice: a salty soak and pumice-stone scrub followed by a vaselined self-massage of both feet and light cotton socks worn all night. The finisher: a spritz of Calvin Klein Eternity perfume on my sandaled toes just before heading out to Holy Thursday Mass. If my feet were not ravishing, at least they would be made kissable by smelling like Eternity.

So it was with silently chuckling chagrin that I listened to Father Eddie's reflection about the ceremonial washing of the feet. He compared the water pouring on the feet to the Living Water of the Spirit, flowing through and quenching all the dry places in our soul that harbor shame – the memories, sins, wounds, and secrets that we want no one to see or to touch.

My carefully scrubbed and oil-softened feet were now so presentable – fuchsia toe-nail polish to boot – that they could no longer candidly represent my inner woundedness and shame. Still, the tenderness of that kiss on my foot felt like a blessing breaking through the vanity that had finally driven me – thank God! -- to treat my own woebegone tootsies with great care.

Okay: I know this isn't the most profound example of how grace can paradoxically tease out healing and blessing from shame and untouchability. But it works for me.

Some Thoughts on Good Friday, Easter Sunday, and Beyond

A reflection by Matthew Fox --

Michael Lerner has asked me to write a few thoughts about the message of Good Friday and Easter.  I appreciate his invitation, a sign of the meaning of deep ecumenism and what we have to learn from each others' faith traditions.  

To me, the “paschal mystery” of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus the rabbi is an archetypal reminder about how, as science now teaches us, all things in the cosmos live, die and resurrect.  Supernovas, galaxies, solar systems, planets, beings that inhabit our planet—we all have our time of existence and of passing out of existence.  But we leave something behind for further generations and that constitutes resurrection.  Supernovas leave elements behind in a great explosion that seed other solar systems, planets and ever our very bodies.  Every being leaves something behind as food for others—[Albert] Einstein said no energy is lost in the universe and Hildegard of Bingen said no warmth is lost in the universe.  I like to say that no beauty is lost in the universe.  The universe has a memory for energy, warmth and beauty.  Nothing our ancestors accomplished is lost—so long as we remember.  Hopefully, as humans, we leave beauty behind and wise progeny, maybe books or paintings or scientific breakthroughs or insights, or healed souls or bodies, etc. etc.  Our resurrection is very much a part of our creativity.  Otto Rank: "The artist is one who wants to leave behind a gift."

Jesus left behind the gift of his teachings, a distillation as I see it of the basic teachings of his Jewish ancestors: That compassion and justice are what link us to the Divine and that we are to look not to empires or to objects for the Kingdom of God but within ourselves and among others in community for the love that is at once our love of neighbor and our love of God, a love “that the world cannot give.”  In other words, to “all our relations.”  The fact of his being tortured and killed in a most ignominious way by the Roman Empire is a stark reminder that we do not take on the powers of darkness as our prophetic vocations require without paying a price.  But the story is that life triumphs over death, even if it has to succumb to powers of death at times and the form that a resurrected life takes is diverse.  It often surprises!

We do not die once.  We all die many times.  Life does that to us with our losses, our betrayals, our own mistakes and emptying out.  But we also resurrect on a regular basis as well.  We forgive, we are forgiven, we bottom out, we move on, we give birth anew thus that life and death are more synergetic that we usually imagine them to be.  “God’s exit is her entrance,” as Meister Eckhart put it.  The depths of the valley of death do not overcome the power of life which makes things new again.  Injustice seems to triumph so often but justice will have the last word provided we live and work for it.

To me these are some of the passages that the Good Friday/Easter Sunday archetype bring to awareness.  There is no resurrection without visiting Hades (the story is that Saturday following his death Jesus visited the underworld).  Good Friday rules for a short period.  But the longer period is the new life and the victory over death and the fear of death that Easter Sunday represents.  It is that hope that rises daily with every new sun.  Moving beyond the fear of death we can live fully again and cease our immortality projects, our empire building and pyramid constructing (wall street too) and get on with…living.  Which is sharing.  [Abraham] Heschel: “Just to be is holy; just to live is a blessing.”  Now our fear of death does not have to rule our lives.  Now we can live fully, generously and creatively.

Father James Martin on "Of Gods and Men"

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