“From the washing of hands to the washing of feet”: a reflexion on the COENA DOMINI (John 13: 1-15) during the time of the Coronavirus pandemic.
The sanitary situation due to the coronavirus urges us to pay a special attention to our personal and community hygiene. One of the recommendations of the World Health Organization is to wash our hands as many as possible so to stop the spread of the coronavirus. Because of many personal reasons, washing our hands becomes one our of weapons during this time of the pandemic. We cannot any longer express our affection or tenderness to a brother, sister, or a friend by shaking his/her hands since the coronavirus is looking after us.
Besides, Jesus before his passion invites us to wash one other’s feet. More than a response against a virus, it is a response against our selfishness that closes us the way of service and love. It might be difficult to wash the feet of our neighbors in this time of the pandemic but it is possible to serve more and more with passion. This particular situation in which we are confined to celebrate our COENA DOMINI at home with our family, teaches us to hope, to love and to bring compassion to the fragile. We became in the fact prophets of love, bearers of the Gospel of the One who at the same time is master and servant.
Luckily enough, the message behind the coronavirus bring us to humility. We realize that we are all the same people of God sharing the same humanity. Therefore, there are no master, no servant or rich and poor. Let us listen again and again to Jesus’ and the World Health Organization to wash our hands and to wash one another’s feet by serving in humility. Let us not miss the chance to be the missionary of service and love because that is the only act in which we will beat the coronavirus. The pandemic cannot deprive us to be good unless our hearts are not open to the mystery of love and passion of our Savior Jesus Christ. It sounds in my heart this short prayer: “Jesus, do not wash only my feet but also my hands so that I can work in order to help, love the sick and the poor who is affected by the Ncovid-19.” Dear brothers and sisters in Christ from the washing of our hands to the washing of our feet let us follow Jesus to his Paschal mystery. 