Tonight we celebrate the great act of love and teaching of Jesus. He knows his time is nearing an end. Time is precious. There is a need to dramatize and get the message home more clearly than he has ever attempted on previous occasions. He decides to do something counter-cultural and radical. As Master and Teacher he stoops down and begins to wash and clean the dirty, muddy, smelly feet of his disciples – surely an act of selflessness and love – an act the disciples will remember for its confronting compassion. If you are going to be a disciple of mine, he proclaims, this is what you are to be about. I would like to expand this confronting gesture by Jesus into the theme we have been exploring throughout Lent. That this land we call EARTH is SACRED, in fact it is I and I am it. We are all one with it. It is the DIVINE. And as Jesus who gets down and washes and serves his disciples, this Earth has bent down and served us. It has given us life; it has birthed us. It provides clean air and oxygen, water and life-flowing streams, so necessary for each of us to live. The food we eat is a product of earth, the animals, the fruits and vegetables. And for all it has provided and nourished us, we have betrayed it and abandoned it as Jesus was betrayed and abandoned by those he served. So we have betrayed and abandoned the Earth which has so lovingly served us, We have taken more from it than we needed; we have over-consumed and exhausted its rich resources; we have polluted the air and water; we have stripped the oceans bare; we have bleached the reefs and melted the ice caps; we have heated the planet beyond an optimal temperature; we have damned the rivers and destroyed fragile eco-systems. So tonight when you bend down and wash another’s foot, I invite you to see the others foot as the Earth. The Earth we commit ourselves to serve and preserve, to love and care for.  

Homily Holy Thursday 2016

By Terry Fitzpatrick