As the Sacred Triduum begins Holy Thursday, the Church ponders three interconnected realities: Christ’s washing of the feet of his apostles, instituting the Eucharist, and establishing the priesthood to perpetuate the Eucharist in memory of him.

These are always inexhaustible mysteries to actualize in any liturgical cycle; this year, however, when we can feel as if we began Lent not just on Ash Wednesday but last June, with the re-emergence of clergy sexual-abuse crisis, they contain far more light and power. They contain the seed of the renewal of the priesthood and the true reform of the Church.

Jesus’ deeply troubled words at the beginning of the Last Supper, “Amen, amen I say to you, one of you will betray me” (John 13:21), were actually charitable. It would have been more accurate to say, “Truly I tell you, tonight all of you will betray me. You will deny me. You will run away from the cross. All but one of you will abandon me as I die for you.”

Despite his knowing all that would transpire, however, he accounted the eventual conversion of the Eleven weightier than the imminent betrayal of all Twelve — and courageously went ahead with the liturgical celebration of the new and eternal Passover. He rose from the table, removed his outer garments, girded himself with a towel, dropped to his knees, poured water into a basin and began to wash the feet of the apostles.

We are used to focusing on the Lord’s humility in doing so: He who took on the form of a slave (Philippians 2:6-11) did the work of a slave, washing the filth off his companions’ feet and leaving them an example of humble service to emulate.

But there is far greater significance to this gesture. As Pope Benedict emphasized in a 2008 Holy Thursday homily and in the second volume of his acclaimed Jesus of Nazareth, Jesus was symbolically cleansing them of their sins for the exercise of the priesthood and the celebration of the Eucharist. Jesus was washing not merely their soles, but their souls.

“Jesus’ gesture,” Pope Benedict wrote, “was a ‘sacrament’ (a visible sign) of the entire mystery of Christ — his life and death — in which he draws close to us, enters us through his Spirit and transforms us, [and] truly ‘cleanses’ us, renewing us from within.”

He expanded on the meaning of Jesus’ words to Peter: that he must wash his feet otherwise he would have no part in him, but didn’t need to wash his head and hands because he had been “already bathed.”

Read more at National Catholic Register