Lenten Reflections

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By Joycelin Raho, Campus Ministry

In 2005-2006, I spent a year doing volunteer work at the Andre House of Hospitality in Phoenix, Arizona. The Andre House is a ministry based in the traditions of the Catholic Worker movement and the Congregation of the Holy Cross. They are dedicated to the Gospel message of Matthew 25, providing meals and basic needs to the homeless.

On Holy Thursday, we offered the opportunity for all of our guests to have their feet washed in the soup line. So my friends, other volunteers, and myself set up benches and basins for water along the hallway and waited for guests to come sit down as we knelt before them to wash their feet.

“Would you like your feet washed?” I said with a hesitant smile as I motioned toward the basins. My first few responses were a quick “No”, “No Thank you” or being ignored completely. In my head I thought, How could you turn this down? Here you are, your feet are filthy and sore and here are people asking to clean them and dress them for you!

One man asked if he could skip the feet washing and just get the brand new socks we were replacing the old ones with. My co-volunteer who was overseeing the project said no, and the guest responded with a “Well I can’t show you these puppies! You’d sure be sorry!” I realized what a vulnerable and even embarrassing feeling it can be to let someone else wash your feet. Peter also felt embarrassed when Jesus knelt down before him to humbly wash his feet in servitude. Some of these people were just afraid of making themselves vulnerable to such a thing, and really, I can’t blame them....

But my daydreaming didn’t last long. Just as quickly as these thoughts entered my mind, they vanished as I was responded to with a “Really? You’ll wash my feet? Wow that would be great” from a big, burly man. He was very tall and towered over me with his long thick hair and beard to match. He was so grateful to have his feet washed, and as he pulled off his dirt covered socks I could see why. The thick calluses and dirt on his feet gave them a gnarly, almost misshapen form and his toenails were thick, yellow, and about three inches long. I had to take a deep breath before I could begin, and offered up all of my disgust and inhibitions as a prayer to God, knowing that this truly is service and God was calling me to share in this opportunity.

I knelt before the man, and helped him place his feet into my basin of water. I poured water over his feet and watched the dirt roll off as I lathered them up with soap, trying to rid each foot of the days’ worth of desert dust that had built up. This made me realize the realities of what foot washing meant in the days of Jesus. In sandals, in the desert, walking everywhere, for a moment my mind flashed back to as if my hands were those of Jesus, and I was washing the feet of my friends in that upper room, as their friend and servant.. I looked up at this man whose feet I was washing, a man who was not my friend, whose name I still do not even know, but in that moment we had the same connection that Jesus had with his disciples: That intimacy, that friendship, that humbling sense of love that one can only know when they give some part of themselves to someone else.

I used to think the symbolism of Holy Thursday was too clean, too planned out, too far off from what Jesus experienced, but then I realized the value of why we re-create the washing of the feet.

Intimacy, Servitude, and Love – Jesus wasn’t washing the feet of his disciples just because they were dirty, he wanted to connect with them on that intimate level. He lowered Himself to them out of a desire to serve them because of his great love. I learned the intense reality of that intimacy as I lowered myself to the feet of our guests at Andre House, often who are written off as the lowest of the low. Without judgment I was able to humble myself to the feet of the poor, the homeless, the addicts, I don’t really know who they were. What I do know is I truly become closer to Jesus as I knelt there on the floor.

May we take this time to reflect on Jesus’ example in this story. The foot-washing account speaks passionately and prophetically about two different and opposite hazards many encounter in the journey of faith. It points to the need to wash the feet of others – to live a life of servanthood based upon Jesus’ model – as well as the need to be washed oneself by the salvific work of Jesus upon the cross.