I thought I'd share an email I received from my husband's friend, a very smart priest, on his thoughts about today:
This day used to be called Maundy Thursday. This is a derivative from the Latin, mandatum. Like the English, mandate, the word means a command. On Holy Thursday, Jesus gave this mandate to his disciples: “If I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you.”
As usual, I think we Christians tend to make the words of Jesus so complicated that they are no longer the words of Jesus. Or worse, we so interpret the Gospel such that we are able to avoid its moral force. For example, supply-side economics is somehow seen as an expression of Jesus’s preferential option for the poor – as if the Tea Party were the party of Jesus Christ and all who bear his name! By the way, we liberals are just as guilty. Liberals tend to think that they can accept the social teachings of Jesus and ignore personal morality. Neither the radical left, nor the radical right, can coherently call themselves Christians because neither follows consistently the example, nor the teachings, of the Christ. Before I get a flood of angry e-mails, let me clarify: You may be Catholic as well as being a Democrat or a Republican; you are not Catholic because you are a Democrat or a Republican.
In any event, Jesus leaves us little room for misunderstanding today. He washes the feet of his disciples and tells the disciples they must do the same for one another. Of course, at the time of Jesus, the washing of feet would have been the somewhat dirty job of a servant or a slave, so I am not so sure we are really in the spirit of the thing by turning this into a ceremonial event in Church. I mean that I have been a priest for 25 years and have never washed a foot that was actually dirty. Never mind, the point is clear, even if the liturgy pretties it up considerably. We must take care of one another, bathe one another, serve one another, love one another. And remember love is something we do with our hearts and our hands, even if we have to get a bit dirty to do so. This is what it means to be a Christian, to follow the example of the Christ.