These next 3 days of the Triduum are some of the few days of
the year when Lauds is at 8am, which is a rather late hour for us. Our ‘night owl’ sisters
appreciate a little extra sleep during these days. For those who rise early anyway, it’s a nice chunk of
time for private prayer. One
reason I didn’t join a Cistercian community, (they follow the Rule of Benedict
also), is that they get up to pray at 3:30am! I just knew at that hour, there would not be
much hope for a coherent Ruth. For most college students I meet today
- and if any of you are reading
this you can confirm it – 3:30am
seems to be end of the evening, not the beginning of a new day!
Holy Thursday is an extra special day for my community
because it commemorates the institution of the Eucharist which has been so
central to our charism of Adoration. According to our constitution…The celebration of the Eucharist is central to our life of
worship. It is here that, united
with each other in Christ, we are one with him in his offering of praise and
thanksgiving to the Father and In
this life of adoration Christ reveals himself in the charity warmth and unity
of a community formed by a common vision of faith.
The other beautiful image from today’s liturgy is the
washing of feet. Feet can be dirty, ugly, misshapen and quite frankly…rather
fragrant in an unpleasant sort of way. This figuratively represents the muckiness of
community life. Yes, we do
lovingly support each other most days…but sometimes we can get worn out by the
constant interaction and like a pebble in our shoe, we get irritated. It is precisely in those times that the
Lord wants us to imitate him and wrap a towel around ourselves and get out the
basin of water. We are not to take
lightly Jesus’ command, “You must wash each other’s feet.” Sometimes that means cleaning up for
the 10th time after a sister who just can’t seem to go anywhere
without leaving a mess. (not
that we have any of those here in our community!)
And the flip-side is, we need to let others wash OUR feet,
just like Peter. We can’t
let our pride, ego, independence get in the way of allowing others to help
us. In community we need to
let others be the Christ who can minister to us. For a lot of us, that can be harder than serving
someone else.
Whose feet will you wash today?
No comments:
Post a Comment