List of points

It is Peter who speaks: Lord! Do You wash my feet? Jesus answers: You do not understand what I am doing now; you will understand it later. Peter insists: You will never wash my feet. And Jesus explains: If I do not wash your feet, you will have no part with me. Simon Peter surrenders: Lord, not only my feet, but also my hands and my head.

Faced by the call to total self-giving, complete and without any hesitation, we often oppose it with false modesty like Peter’s… May we also be men with a heart like the Apostle’s! Peter allows no one to love Jesus more than he does. That love leads us to reply thus: Here I am! Wash me, head, hands and feet! Purify me completely, for I want to give myself to You without holding anything back.

Authority. This does not consist in the one above yelling at the one below, and he in turn to the one further down.

In such a way of behaving — a caricature of authority — apart from an evident lack of charity and of decent human standards, all that is achieved is that the one at the top becomes isolated from those who are governed, because he does not serve them. Rather it could be said that he uses them!

You understood the meaning of friendship when you began to feel that you were like the shepherd of a little flock which you had left abandoned, but were now trying to gather together again, taking it upon yourself to serve each one of them.