On the night when he was betrayed, Jesus gave his friends the two things he knew they would miss the most. He gave them a way to eat with him and to be touched by him. He said, You won’t have my body with you anymore, so I am giving you a way to re-member me. You will re-member me when you break a piece of bread and take a bit of wine and share it with one another. In the sharing, you will put me back together. You will be my body.
And then he washed their feet. As he had on so many other occasions, he touched them, made himself vulnerable to them, served them, loved them. He said, I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you. If you continue this way, you will become my body in the world, touching, risking, serving, loving. You won’t need me to wash your feet anymore because you will have learned to do it for one another. You will learn to be Christ to one another. You won’t need to look for me anymore, because you will see me in your neighbor. Little children, I am with you only a little longer. You will look for me, [but] where I am going, you cannot come. I give you a new commandment, that you love one another.
If the world failed to love Jesus enough to keep from crucifying him, he gives us now another invitation: we can love one another enough to see Christ in our neighbor, and stop from crucifying them. This is our chance at redemption, at an Easter miracle: to take the love we profess for God and direct it toward serving our neighbor.
--Juli Wilson-Black, Notre-Dame & Good Friday
Image source: Christ Washing the Feet of the Apostles and Last Supper, anonymous Master, Northern France or Southern Low Countries, Brabent, 4th quarter of the 15th century, Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp, Belgium, http://vlaamseprimitieven.vlaamsekunstcollectie.be/en/collection/christ-washing-the-feet-of-the-apostles-and-last-supper
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