Holy Thursday: “He loved them to the extreme”

I have given you an example so that as I have done for you, you should also do. (John 13:15).

I have done nothing other than to imitate what Jesus Christ did when washing the feet of his disciples. You have crowded to see what he was doing and you have observed everything with greater attention. Well, now I ask you with the same attention to listen to the explanation I am trying to give you, exposing the great passage of the gospel and pointing out the teachings of charity and Christian humility that Jesus Christ gives us.

The lyrics of the gospel that we have heard begin with such a sublime and elevated intonation which immediately reveals to us the greatness of the act that Jesus Christ is going to perform to give us an example.

Before the feast of the Passover, Jesus knowing that his time had come to pass from this world to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end (John 13, 1).

What lofty concepts those words imply! They cannot be read without the soul feeling moved and experiencing something heavenly and divine. The evangelist embraces everything. He expresses time. Before the Passover festival. The Thursday evening; the eve of the feast day of the Unleavened Passover, in which the Paschal Lamb was sacrificed memory of the departure from Egypt. He determines the perfect knowledge that Jesus Christ had that the time had come for him to depart from this world to the Father. He declares the great love that Jesus Christ had for his people and highlights the extension of that same love with these words: He loved them to the end.

Oh, words full of mysteries! The Christian soul has within a faithful mirror of the most ardent charity of Jesus Christ. Those words are the declaration of his ineffable affection; they are the expression of the fires of love in which his divine heart was embraced; they are like the very breath of his most blessed soul, ready to give himself up for redemption of the world and to suffer all kinds of torments and death itself.

It is not possible to properly ponder the love of Jesus Christ for his people. Did the divine Savior know everything that was going to happen to him in a few hours? Did he know the betrayal of Judas, the denial of Saint Peter, the abandonment of the disciples, the ingratitude of the Jews, the anguish of his holy Mother, and the unprecedented pains that he had to suffer in his body and his soul? It seems like they should only be worried about those things, all of them terrible, but it’s not like that. So; He only cares about men. He was never nicer to them than then. During life he shows them a greater love; close to his death, he declares to them an eternal love: “He loved until the end.” That’s when he gives them proof of that love, which he had not given them during his life, and to all of us the admirable example of humility that has no other name than this: ineffable.

I contemplate Jesus Christ celebrating with his apostles the meal of the Passover Lamb that He represented so beautifully. He saw himself figured in that innocent animal. At the same time, the lamb was eaten in the houses of the Jews with the same ceremonies.

Blind! They did not know that the Lamb of God was in their midst. The devil had already taken over the heart of Judas to sell his Master. He knew it, and He also knew that the Father had put all things in his hands, that is, the world lost by sin, the world then made whole by grace, and the eternal kingdom and dominion in heaven, in earth and the abysses; knowing all this and having left the Father by an act of love for Him was going to return charity for another. Once dinner is over and before instituting the Eucharistic meal, then he gets up from the table, leaves his clothes, and takes a towel and wraps it around him.

Jesus Christ the Son of God puts water in a basin and amid the silence and amazement of his disciples begin to wash their feet. What is this? Are you surprised, Christians? Well I am going to take away your astonishment with these words of Saint Augustine:

What admiration could be caused by the fact that he poured water into the basin to wash the feet of his disciples the one who shed his blood on earth to wash away the filth of sins?

So He went to Simon Peter. Here Jesus Christ is going to hit a stone that will cause sparks of divine humility to emerge. Peter is going to resist, but that resistance will honor the disciple and the Teacher. Two humilities are going to fight, and both will emerge victorious over the resistance of Peter. One will move us; Jesus, as always, will build us up and teach us.

Peter seeing that Jesus Christ is addressing him, is full of astonishment, and as if out of his mind He says: Lord, will you wash my feet? You, who are Holiness by essence, do you want to wash feet to me who am a mean and miserable sinner?

Jesus Christ, without stopping for a moment, looks at his disciple and with a calm but firm voice, says to him:

What I am doing, you do not understand now, but you will understand later.

The prince of the apostles did not reach that much; he saw his Master at his feet, and, although he had to calm him down what he had told him, letting himself be carried away by his impetuous character, He answered: You will never wash my feet. Saint Augustine says that his words come only from His faith comes from him, from his fear, humility, and love of Jesus Christ.

Two humilities were battling here, and it was necessary for the greatest, the most powerful, to win that of Jesus Christ who, responding to Peter, says to him: if I do not wash you, you will not participate in my company, you will not be from my school, you can leave whenever you want, your nets await you, your boat awaits you. I wanted you to be a fisher of men; I had chosen you for a fundamental stone of my Church; but you already know, that if I don’t wash you, you will neither be a fisher of men nor stone of the Church, nor mine, nor anything.

Oh, my sweet and loving Master! I wanted to avoid an act of humiliation before me, but I know that I am ignorant, that I do not understand the mystery and that is why I have acted foolishly; but if resistance has to cost me so dearly, see me here confused, repentant, and subject to what that you have; leave you and your company, never; separate me from you, never. Where would I go?

Ah! Mister. Here I am surrendered to your sovereign will. Lord, now I am the one I pray and beg: Wash not only my feet but also my hands and head…

After he had washed their feet and taken their clothes, he sat down again at the table he told them:

Do you know what I have done with you? You call me Lord and Master and say well because I am. For if I, the Lord and Master, have washed your feet, you too must wash each other’s feet.

Who will not follow the example of Jesus Christ? Who will not exercise himself in works of humility and charity to imitate him? Oh, what strength that example of Jesus Christ has had for many souls! The doctrine of Jesus taught in the Cenacle with his example, has raised countless heroic and generous souls who are convinced that the more they humble themselves before the world the more they rise before God, they have not ceased to imitate the example of the Savior consecrating himself to serve the poor, the needy, the sick, all the afflicted for misfortune. And there will never be a lack in this world of those beauties of Catholicism, those souls who imitate the Savior; Before, as the apostle says, there would be a lack of prophecies, miracles, gifts of languages, examples of Christian charity cease to exist. Charity will never disappear.

But let us not only admire those great and beautiful souls who, in imitation of Jesus Christ, are humble and charitable towards their fellow neighbor; let us also be humble and charitable; and if the flesh resists, because our soul is not clean, the humble Jesus, the charitable Jesus, he is willing to wash us. We need Jesus Christ to wash and cleanse our faults He knows who is dirty. Here, here he also tells us as in the Cenacle: You are clean, but not all of you.