Foot-washer

Bellarmine University 29th Sunday in Ordinary Time https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/102024.cfm Jesus gives us a challenging instruction today: “whoever wishes to be great among you will … be the slave of all.” We might understandably be repulsed by Jesus’ language of slavery. Who would want to be a slave? We have a horrifying legacy of enslavement in the United States, a legacy that extends to the Caribbean and Central and South America. Slavery has never been a positive force in the world, including in the Greco-Roman culture where Jesus lived. So, it is a shock to Jesus’ listeners then and to us to today when he calls himself a slave and tells them he will be a human sacrifice. By calling himself a slave, Jesus is not saying that he doesn’t have dignity and value, as he is a human being created in the image of God. Nor that his labor and his body can be used up and thrown away by others. Rather he is attacking the human desire to use other people in this way. So-called “gr...

St. Agnes Catholic Church 4th Sunday in Easter Cycle A Apr 29 & 30, 2023 https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/043023.cfm Ten years ago, Kate and I travelled to Rome and the Vatican for our honeymoon.  We spent a couple days exploring St. Peter’s Basilica, which as I am sure you know is the biggest church in the world, located in Vatican City where the pope lives and the global Catholic Church is centered.   We signed up for a special tour that took us deep into the necropolis underneath St. Peter’s Basilica. The great church was built onto what used to be a cemetery on Vatican Hill on the spot where St. Peter was martyred. It takes about an hour to explore this subterranean cemetery.  The ground slowly rises until you come to an ancient tomb, which is marked by a very simple monument that is scrawled with Greek graffiti saying, “this is Peter.” In the center, is a simple, transparent box containing the very bones of Peter.   As we ascended back t...