«Before a humanity on its knees we too must kneel as brothers and sisters of the oppressed.” Pope Leo explains the logic of God, not a God of strength and violence, but a God of love. «We are always tempted to look for a God who “serves us”, who makes us win, who is as useful as money and power. However, we do not understand that God really serves us, yes, but with the free and humble gesture of washing our feet: here is the omnipotence of God”, he explains in the homily of the mass in Cena Domini, before washing the feet of the 12 priests of the diocese of Rome. And remember that Christians do not follow the logic of the world made of power and strength, but that of humility and love unto death. Precisely with this liturgy that allows us to enter the Easter triduum “we participate in a banquet during which Christ “having loved his own, who were in the world, loved them to the end”. His love, at the Last Supper, becomes a “gesture and food for all, revealing the justice of God. In the world, right there where evil rages, Jesus loves definitively, forever, with all of himself”.
Jesus institutes the Eucharist and washes the apostles’ feet. «The Lord’s gesture», explains Leone, «is one with the table to which he invited us. It is an example of the sacrament: while it confirms its meaning, it gives us a task that we want to take on as nourishment for our lives.” Washing feet is much more “than a moral model”, underlines the Pontiff, “He in fact gives us his own form of life: washing feet is a gesture that summarizes the revelation of God, an exemplary sign of the Word made flesh, his unmistakable memory. Making the condition of the servant his own, the Son reveals the glory of the Father by dismantling the worldly criteria that dirty our conscience.”
We desire “a God of success and not of Passion”, as Pope Benedict said, but God’s omnipotence is revealed in washing feet, in “dedicating one’s life to those who, without this gift, cannot exist. The Lord is on his knees to wash man, out of love for him. And the divine gift transforms us.”
With this gesture «Jesus not only purifies our image of God from the idolatries and blasphemies that have dirtied it, but purifies our image of man, who considers himself powerful when he dominates, who wants to win by killing those who are his equal, who is considered great when he is feared. True God and true man, Christ instead gives us an example of dedication, service and love.”
Jesus does not offer his example «when everyone is happy and loves him, but on the night he was betrayedin the darkness of incomprehension and violence, so that it is clear that the Lord does not love us because we are good and pure: he loves us, and therefore forgives us and purifies us. The Lord does not love us if we let ourselves be washed by his mercy: he loves us, and therefore washes us, so that we can respond to his love.”
AND Jesus does not ask us to reciprocate his service, but to share it with others. “Letting ourselves be served by the Lord”, as Peter ultimately did, “is a condition for serving as He did”. «God gave an example not of how to dominate, but of how to free oneself; of how life is given, not how it is destroyed. So, before a humanity kneeling due to many examples of brutality, let us also kneel as brothers and sisters of the oppressed.”
Therefore, concludes Pope Leo, «Holy Thursday is therefore a day of ardent gratitude and authentic brotherhood. May this evening’s Eucharistic adoration, in every parish and community, be a time to contemplate the gesture of Jesus, bringing ourselves to our knees as He did, and asking for the strength to imitate him in service with the same love.”
