If you ever watch the Pope in the ceremony of the washing of the feet on Holy Thursday, you will see that he does not wear his regular priestly stole but a deacon stole! Why? Because the deacon’s stole is the symbol of service (diakonia is the biblical Greek word for service) that resembles the towel used by Jesus when he washed his disciples’ feet. It is also a reminder that the Pope and his brother bishops never stop being deacons; meaning, they remain forever as sacramental signs of Christ the Server in this world.
God came down from heaven to dwell among people, to serve the needs of people, the very same people who had rebelled against Him and usurped the world he had entrusted to them. In so doing, they ruined themselves. God wanted to save them, even though they deserved to die. So, he takes the first step; he reaches out to them by serving them. The washing of the feet of his disciples was an icon of Jesus’ entire mission and revelation, a miniature portrait of the heart of God. And so, he tells us that if we wish to regain our place in the family of God, we are to enter into the same dimension of self-forgetful love. There is no other way: “You should wash each other’s feet…”
For our fallen nature, this is a hard lesson. For that very reason, Jesus taught it so insistently and so graphically. The cross of self-sacrifice repels us, so Jesus climbed onto it before us to make sure that we make no mistake about what he means. But although the lesson is hard, it is not sad. It is the truth that will set us free, and Jesus finishes with a glow in his eyes and a smile on his lips: “Now that you know this, happiness will be yours if you behave accordingly.”
You and I are called to this diakonia in everyday life. Like Mother Teresa of Calcutta used to say: “Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love.”