The Washing of the Feet

From the Old Oligarch

The liturgy is a great deposit of doctrine in symbolic form. Lex orandi, lex credendi. In a robust Catholic environment, it can be the source from which all things flow and to which they return. As Pickstock attempts to remind post-modernists, ora et labora meant that every labor was sanctified by a closing act of prayer, even in the schola, thus the subtitle of her book, "the liturgical consummation of philosophy." The spirit of the beginning and the end had a fundamental impact on the tenor of what was done in the middle, whether it was scholastic philosophy or politics "in the world," but that is another story.

In an age like ours, when Catholic culture is receding, we often fail to notice the meaning of liturgical symbols which once animated the piety of our forefathers. This is one reason why it is incredibly important not to change the liturgy simply because we would like to see it streamlined, or because something doesn't make sense to us, or indeed, to many modern Catholics. Such streamlining, done in the name of short-term gains of "intelligibility," often means, in fullest perspective, that the last vestige of a liturgically-expressed belief has been made a palimpsest.

Such is the case with the washing of the feet on Maundy Thursday. I know it is too late now for liturgists to change their game plans (not like they would care to), but I felt the need to blog about this in advance of Triduum, when this beautiful ritual is often glossed over with some bland remark about serving others.

I can still remember the time when parishes would re-enact the Washing of the Feet using 12 priests, and failing that, supplementing the priests with religious. The trend now-a-days, however, has been to use laity. (Too much sacerdotalism, and all that.) The primary symbolism presented by this act is driven by an interpretation of the Washing of the Feet as an object lesson in charity. Facile liturgy is thus designed according to facile exegesis. There's a better interpretation of Jn 13:1-20, and a deeper meaning to this unique Lenten ritual.

(The starting point to this investigation, in case you're wondering, is the Lord's enigmatic question in Jn 13:12 and Eugenio Zolli's few pages on it in The Nazarene. Zolli has an eye for overlooked passages. I am also aware that there are many variations in the 14-centuries-old ritual of the Washing, and that using laity is licit.)

I think a full understanding of the passage rests on three points:

1) For a Jew, commanding someone to wash your feet was a gesture of great self-abasement. Talmudic legislation forbade Jews from commanding this action of anyone but a Gentile slave, the lowest of the low. By washing the apostles' feet, Jesus takes on the form of a slave, in anticipation of the total humiliation of Good Friday, in accordance with St. Paul's words in Philippians 2:7-8: "Christ emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross."

2) Many Patristic authors [for example, Eusebius and Ambrose] see a preparation for the proclamation of the Gospel in the washing of the feet, in accordance with Isaiah 52:7: "How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings the Good News." This is the passage in Isaiah from which we get the very word Gospel, and which goes on to predict what this Good News will look like: the death of the Suffering Servant (Is 52:13-53:12) and the restoration of the covenant through the sending of the Logos (Is 54-55), which immediately follow it in the book of the prophet and the evangelist.

Christ washes the apostles' feet to make them beautiful in preparation for announcing the consummation of the divine plan. The Washing is thus an act whereby Christ invests the apostles with evangelical authority, as part of their episcopal office, as He explains in Jn 13:20: "Amen, Amen, I say to you, he who receives any one whom I send receives me; and he who receives me receives him who sent me." Think of Matthew 18:18, not only Matthew 22:39.

3) We already have a basis in (2) for thinking about a connection between the Washing and ordination. This is, of course, reinforced by ancient Christian custom which celebrates the institution of the Christian priesthood during the Holy Thursday Mass of the Lord's Supper, since, just after the Washing, Christ commands his disciples: "Do this in memory of me," giving them the mandate to celebrate the Eucharist which is the reason for their priesthood.

The last piece of the puzzle comes into view if we read Scripture with Jewish eyes, awaiting the Old being fulfilled in the New. While sometimes it was customary to offer guests the means to wash their own feet before dining, we know that the Passover must be eaten shod (Exodus 12:11), so this would be the one meal where such a custom wouldn't have been necessary. Why does Jesus do it?

Exodus 30:18-21 tells us that Aaron and his sons, the High Priests of Israel, must wash their feet before entering the Holy Place to minister before the Lord, just as God Himself instructed Moses directly "Put off your shoes from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground" (Exodus 3:5).

Holy things are for the holy, not the uninitiated. When Moses had finished creating all the implements necessary for divine worship and the tabernacle, he then turned to ordain Aaron and his sons as the first High Priests of the old covenant. Remember from (1) the great indignity of a Jew washing another's feet. To my knowledge, there is no other passage in the OT where one Jew washes another's feet except Leviticus 8:6: Since Aaron and his sons cannot wash themselves to purify themselves for their ordination (because they are not yet priests), Moses does it for them as part of their ordination ritual.

This gives us the full meaning of the Washing of the Feet:

Christ is preparing His apostles to be His first priests. Christ chooses a symbol of great self-abasement to underscore the nature of this priesthood in imitatio Christi. Sharing in Christ's priesthood means sharing in his kenosis, His self-emptying, His self-sacrifice. Just as Aaron and his sons were the first priests of the Old Covenant, Christ washes the feet of the Apostles to be the first priests of the New Covenant. They have "already been washed clean" (Jn 13:10) of sin in Baptism. Now, they receive a special washing, proper to their ordination, so that they can worthily enter the New Tabernacle -- the first Tabernacle to contain the Eucharist, the Upper Room.

Such, IMHO, is the meaning of the Washing of the Feet: priestly, sacrificial, mysterious. The new covenant fulfilling the old in its figures. So if you get another lazy, banal homily on "serving others" or some such permutation of the importance of being nice, you've been shirked. Pray for more from your priest. Christ did. More than any other day of the year, this day should spur priests to recall the meaning of their vocation, so encourage them to break open the word and to feed you. Wash off the dirty exegesis of vague communitarian motives, so that the Gospel, not niceties, can be spread across the mountain tops.

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The CDA, Congregation for the Discipline of the Sacraments in "Paschales Solemnitatis" (Preparation and Celebration of the Easter Feasts) in #51 states: "The washing of the feet of chosen men (viri) which, according to tradition, is performed on this day, represents the sevice and charity of Christ, who came "not to be served, but to serve" (Mt. 20:20). This tradition should be maintained, and it proper significance explained."

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Two stories about bishops restricting footwashing ceremony to men here and here. Fr. Z writes about the rite of washing of feet at Holy Thursday Mass here.

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Foot washing was part of an early baptismal rite:

Although the authenticity of De sacramentis has been doubted, today all scholars agree that it was really written by St. Ambrose, bishop in Milan 373-397. De sacramentis is a shorthand transcription of the sermons while De mysteriis is an edited version rewritten for a larger audience. What Ambrose says in De sacramentis was intended only for the newly baptized, not for readers in other places. That is why Ambrose so proudly can underline the fact that the church of Milan has preserved a part of the baptismal rite which had been left out in Rome.

Ambrose explains that the feet were washed while John 13 was read aloud. The reason for the rite is, according to him, not only the new life style which Jesus taught his disciples, but also that original sin came to man through Adam's foot through the serpent's bite.

Text and introduction in: Ambroise de Milan, Des sacrements. Des mystères, ed. B. Botte (Sources Chrétiennes 25bis), Paris 1961, 92-96.

On the Mysteries, Chapter 6
On the Sacraments, Book III, Chapter 1