Thursday of the Fourth Week of Easter
(Acts
13:13-25; John 13:16)
A seminarian
admitted that he had difficulty with his community chore. He was assigned to clean toilets. “Anything but that,” he pleaded. However, for good reason seminarians should
perform such duties. In doing so, they
imitate Jesus whom they purport to follow.
In today’s
gospel Jesus has just washed his disciples’ feet. His action came close to scandalizing
them. Then he told them to wash each
other’s feet. One can imagine the
disgust that the disciples feel now. But,
Jesus intimates, just as he came not to be served but to serve so must his
disciples. “’No slave,’” he says, “’is
greater than his master.’”
We should
not think that we must give every kind of assistance to others. To optimize our time we will do the necessary
work for which we are best qualified. Even
that work, however, must be carried out with humility. As St. Augustine says, “…if
humility does not precede and accompany and follow every good work we do, …pride
will wrest from our hand any good deed we do while we are in the very act of
taking pleasure in it.”
