Holy Thursday.

Image taken from: http://joyfullotus.wordpress.com/2012/04/05/lent-2012-maundy-thursday/

One of the most familiar customary activities on Holy Thursday in the Christian world is the washing of feet.  I understand it is meant to symbolize the role of servant for the foot washer to the foot washee.

Over the years, I have noted that an attempt has been made to have people in the hierarchy to wash the feet of people deemed to be as far from that position as possible.  I have observed this being the washing of the feet of the lowly parishoner by the pastor of a church.  I have watched as the poor and the homeless have been shuffled forward as a way for a position in power to show how humble they can be by washing the  feet of people generally considered undesirable.  This year, in fact, the pope of the Roman Catholic Catholic Church stepped totally out of tradition by washing ……….. wait for it ……… the feet of women!!!!!!  And as if this were not  low enough he even went one step further and washed the feet of the elderly and the disabled.

What a holy man he must be.

This reminds me of the time I spent as a Franciscan Sister back in my 20’s.  For those familiar with the life of St. Francis of Assisi, one might remember that one of the ways that Francis was seen as being a holy man was that he would touch, hug even, those individuals afflicted with leprosy.

This set me to thinking … what must it have been like to be that leper? After some pondering on this thought, I decided to express it poetically. The result is what follows:

                  Leper

To have no claim on heaven

To have no divine birthright.

To somehow exist outside of redemption and salvation

And ~ therefore ~ perhaps not to exist at all.

To be used by saints

To show what depths of humiliation they are willing to descend

In order to prove their love for God.

And for God to allow it to be so.

To be a spirit of Life

Imprisoned

In a body of Death.

And to wait.

To be a leper is to wait ~

To wait to hear that the Good News is not just for those “out there”

~ but for you also.

To wait not for the saint whose embrace tells of his or her own humiliation or strength in overcoming revulsion,

But to wait for the saint whose embrace

Tells of the love of God

Invites you to know redemption

Welcomes you to salvation.

To be a leper is to need others to reflect God to you for you can no longer recognize the Holy within yourself.

To wait.

To be nothing.

Anathema.

Leper.

Me.

 

Deborah Gruzosky Bridge

1984   (Yikes!  That is 30 years ago!!!)