Last night I went for a walk around the neighborhood, a new regular quarantine activity for me. I saw a meme the other day that said, “You know you’re an introvert when you need ALONE TIME…during quarantine.” Yep! Sounds about right!
Anyway, I went for my “alone time” walk right before sunset. Despite a heavy cloud cover, there was a clear area of sky just above the horizon, and the sun was gleaming in gold and orange and pink. It was really glorious, and the sun made the Hudson Valley hills look like they were on fire in deep crimson and reds.
Then I realized that the random shuffle of songs I had playing in my ears were all about fire. That’s no coincidence. God has been speaking to me lately through music, which is an unusual way for Him to communicate for me, but these are certainly unusual times. To notice God in nature and beauty is a more typical way for me to experience God’s presence.
But yesterday it was the combination of both that so moved me, and I found myself grinning ear to ear as I walked. (Thank goodness no one was out, or I would’ve felt a bit odd.) It was as if God was showing me His eternal presence, reassuring me that He is active, that His love is like a burning fire that enlivens everything it touches without destruction. This walk, the sunset, the message was such a consolation to me during these otherwise dark times.
Right now in the midst of this troubled time, I can feel that God is working something powerful in my heart.
I can’t explain it, and I don’t know what it is. Nevertheless, I have felt a deep abiding presence of God in the midst of all this. I keep asking Him, what is going on here? And I keep hearing the phrase,
“What I am doing, you do not understand now, but you will understand later.”
John 13:7
This week our prayer group has been reflecting on the story of Jesus washing His disciples feet from the Gospel of John, chapter 13. This verse has been drumming in my head all week, including during this walk.
It’s as if He is trying to bring me to a greater trust and understanding of His love, as He does for Peter in this passage.
Our human minds just cannot understand God’s love, and His ways are mysterious to us. My concept of love is limited. My understanding is weak and reliance on my own wisdom is full of pride.
Thank God for Peter because that was his struggle. In his favor, He viewed Jesus rightly as his superior, his teacher, his messiah. To allow Jesus to wash him was unreasonable. But it was also tainted with pride, not wishing Jesus to see his ugliness.
But Jesus is trying to love Peter more deeply than he can understand. Jesus is offering unconditional love through service and sacrifice.
This is a concept that is so difficult for many of us. We can love Jesus for whom He is as Lord, but we balk at allowing Him to love us as friend. We cannot comprehend the idea that Someone could possibly love everything about us. It’s hard to fathom a Love without hurt and with no walls or boundaries put up between us.
I know that I push back, like Peter, when I’m offered this type of encounter with Jesus.
I think that’s part of what I’m experiencing now. My thoughts go like this: I’m happy just to love you, Lord. You can’t wash my feet, Lord. You shouldn’t kneel in front of me, in front of my ugliness. Stay away from those broken places. I don’t want You to see those.
Of course, we know that He does see them, whether we acknowledge that or not. Aren’t we fortunate that He should see those things, because He can bring healing to those deep, dark places that we don’t like to look at. Because when He brings these things to light, when He asks us to allow Him to wash us, it’s not to make us uncomfortable or to show us where we are dirty.
Love, with a captial L, is truly blind.
He knows these things are not a part of us. He looks right past our pains and sins to our true self, to the beautiful person He created. In this Gospel He’s saying to us, let me show you that your wounds and misery, your transgressions and dirtiness can be washed away. You are beautiful and you are loved.
Unless I allow myself to be loved as He wishes to love me, without putting restraints on Him or limits on what I will allow, I will have “no inheritance with” Him.
I need to allow Jesus to wash my feet and I pray that I won’t resist any longer.
I want that kind of Love to penetrate my heart. I want to be loved as His own and loved until the end. Because we cannot give what we have not received. The only way that I can do as He commands just a few verse later, “As I have loved you, so you also should love one another,” is if I allow Him to first Love me.
I want to be the woman He sees me to be. I want to live as the picture that He has of me. That might mean that I have to experience something uncomfortable. Maybe I need to rid myself of pride, and I need to be okay with being vulnerable.
Whatever Jesus has planned for me, whatever He is working in my heart, I pray that I will stop trying to understand. I want to open myself up to receive the gifts He is offering me. I will let myself by loved by perfect Love. Whatever He is doing, I accept all.
I daresay that we all need to allow Jesus to “wash our feet”, especially during this difficult time.
As people of faith, we know that God is not absent and has not abandoned us. We trust that He only wills our good and can turn all darkness to light. Yet, we cannot wrap our heads around this reality that we are living. What is God doing in all of this?
This scene at the Last Supper of the washing of the disciples feet, which we will hear in just a few short days during Holy Week, can offer us some consolation right now.
We do not know now, but I don’t doubt for a moment that one day later we will understand.
As the disciples gathered for that final meal, a shared, group experience, there was stress and worry. Jesus was making it clear His time with them on earth was at an end. They knew the enemy was all around them. There was a shared anxiety among them. Everything was confusing and uncertain.
It is precisely during this shared meal that Jesus instituted the Eucharist, the gift of His great love for humanity.
Right now we are living a shared experience, one of stress and worry. It is a time of uncertainty and living through the unknown, with an enemy that we cannot see all around us.
I have no doubt that this moment, like the Last Supper, will also be remembered as a show of God’s great love for humanity in some unique way. His presence is among us now, as at that Holy Thursday night 2000 years ago.
Yet at the Last Supper, before He gave the disciples, and the future Church, the gift of his True Presence through the Eucharist, he chose to have an individual encounter with each and every disciple separately. He washed all of their feet, not just Peter’s. He went to each disciple and tenderly cared for each of them in the washing of their feet.
In this dark time, I do not doubt that He is showing His great Love for each of us individually as well.
Now more than ever, we need to remember that Our God is a personal God, one who looks at each person, and deals with each of us on an individual basis. He is using our shared experience to also work in unique ways in our individual hearts.
And He says to each of us, “You do not understand now, but you will understand later.”
Let us trust Jesus’ words. We may not understand what He is doing now, but we will understand later. Let us abandon ourselves to His loving and perfect Will. Whatever it is that He is working, both collectively, and individually, in our lives, let us trust that His plan is better than anything else.
Have you ever prayed the Litany of Trust? It is a beautiful, healing prayer written by the Sisters of Life. The poetic phrases of this prayer asks God to deliver us from our doubts and fears, and asks Him to give us the grace to trust in all His promises. I invite you to pray this prayer as we enter into Holy Week.
Jesus, I trust in You.
Also, I made a downloadable coloring page of the Divine Mercy image. Drawing and coloring has been very therapeutic for me during this time. Maybe it will be for you too.
