Maundy Thursday: Parental Edition

Surely, it’s not the footwashing that mattered…
Basin and water and towel.
It’s not about the material, is it?
No – it’s about the graceful bending
– outward or inward –
toward another in gentle love.

So do you think –
and I ask honestly! –
Jesus would have approved of baby wipes?
Or hands chapped and cracked
from bottle washing?
Or stooping to scoop
a fussy baby from a crib at 3:00 am?
What about wiping spit up or even –
a dirty bottom?

The beginnings of this poem popped into my head as I lay down to sleep after a 3 am feeding, crossing from Maundy Thursday into Good Friday. In John 13:34-35, part of the Maundy Thursday liturgy, Jesus says:

“I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

Jesus gives a new commandment – in Latin a mandatum – that his disciples love one another. As I couldn’t be in church during Holy Week, I found myself pondering if I was indeed living this command to love one another as I cared for (along with my husband) our infant son.

Sometimes the command to love looks like a radical act of loving the enemy at our gates. Sometimes it looks like the quiet act of patiently caring for the most vulnerable. Much of the time, there’s no fanfare or anyone to shout praise. It’s just the day in and day out practice of love. It’s radical because it persists.

So today and every day, may we sanctify the ordinary with persistent love.

© Annabelle P. Markey