How does feet washing relate to Eucharist?
Published: April 13, 2018
Bishop Anthony B. Taylor delivered this homily on Holy Thursday, March 29.
One of the greatest occupational hazards I face as a priest and now as bishop is that it is easy to get used to being waited on. And I never want to take people’s kindness for granted.
Once I spoke about this with a priest from India, where poverty there is so great that priests, who obviously have a source of income, feel morally obligated to give jobs to those who don’t, with the result that rectories have maids, cooks, gardeners and drivers. Yet whatever the reason, priests must always remember that the help provided us by others is to enable us to serve more effectively and not turn us into members of the local leisure class.
Social divisions in Israel in Jesus’ time were even greater than the caste system of today’s India. There the wealthy not only had servants but also slaves and one of their jobs was to wash the tired, dirty feet of visitors. It was a tender gesture of welcome as universal there as offering drinks to visitors is here.
As late as the 1960s my grandparents in Texas employed an African-American cleaning lady named Allie Turner who for decades was my grandmother’s constant companion, much loved but still subordinate. These were still the days
Article source: https://www.arkansas-catholic.org/news/article/5570/How-does-feet-washing-relate-to-Eucharist