Jesus tells Peter: "Unless I wash you, you have no share with me." (Jn 13: 8) It is possible to look at this statement in two ways. First, there is the literal sense of the moment. Peter has not listened to the Lord's previous statement: "You do not know now what I am doing, but later you will understand." (Jn 13: 7) How often do we jump to conclusions based on appearances? It is God who knows the heart. When we pray we are inpatient to obtain what we want and what we want is influenced by self-indulgence: "You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, in order to spend what you get on your own pleasures." (Jas 4: 2-3) Peter cannot share in the Lord unless he is prepared to listen and learn from the Lord so that he can do as he asks and not act out of his own self-regard. Second, if we think of washing as baptism, there are two possible meanings. The first is the sacrament of baptism. Unless we die to ourselves in baptism, being washed in the blood of the Lord, we cannot participate in his divine life. The second, is similar, as it refers to the baptism and the drink that the Lord tells James and John they must receive and drink if they wish to follow him more closely: "The cup that I drink you "Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?" (Mk 10: 38) In other words, are we willing to endure the cross with him and enter into his Passion? Jesus says elsewhere: "If any want to be my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? Or what will they give in return for their life?" (Mtt 16: 24-26) The message of the Holy Eucharist to a challenge to us not only to receive from the hand of the Lord but also to imitate hi in his self-giving.
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