Vatican City - The Holy Father Leo XIV has restored a further tradition of very particular significance. The washing of the feet, in John’s Gospel, is the gesture by which Christ interprets Himself, His way of exercising authority, the very form of His love. Jesus rises from the table, lays aside His garments, ties a towel around Himself and kneels before His own. The Holy Thursday liturgy preserves this act under its ancient name, the Mandatum, because from that gesture flows the new commandment of fraternal love.
In his Holy Thursday homily of 2006, Benedict XVI said: “God descends and becomes a slave; He washes our feet.” In that descent, he explained, the whole mystery of Jesus Christ is revealed: redemption not as an outward act, but as a love that stoops down, purifies and makes man capable of sitting at the table of God. Two years later, again at the Mass in Coena Domini, Benedict XVI distinguished within the washing of the feet the sacramentum and the exemplum: first of all it is a gift, the action of Christ who purifies; then it becomes a task, a model of life, a call to mutual forgivenessand to daily service. In the Chrism Mass of 2008, Benedict himself explicitly linked the gesture to the ordained ministry, saying that Christ “portrayed the whole of His high priesthood in the gesture of the washing of the feet”. It is therefore not a pious scene, but a true synthesis of the priesthood of Christ.
It is precisely here that the choice made by Leo XIV takes on its significance. The Bishop of Rome will celebrate the Evening Mass of Holy Thursday in his cathedral, Saint John Lateran, and will wash the feet of twelve priests. The Vicariate of Rome wanted the eleven priests ordained by Leo XIV last year to return before their Bishop after their first months of ministry in the parishes, “to be confirmed in the faith”. The Pope’s gesture is intended to show them “that this is the path to follow”, because Jesus, at the Last Supper, taught in a concrete way that true power is service.
The priests whose feet the Pope will wash are: Don Andrea Alessi, Don Gabriele Di Menno Di Bucchianico, Don Francesco Melone, Don Clody Merfalen, Don Federico Pelosio, Don Marco Petrolo, Don Pietro Hieu Nguyen Huai, Don Matteo Renzi, Don Giuseppe Terranova, Don Simone Troilo and Don Enrico Maria Trusiani. The twelfth priest, Don Renzo Chiesa, spiritual director of the Pontifical Roman Major Seminary, also brings to the celebration the sign of fidelity tested in suffering.
fr.C.V.
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