John 13:9Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

Thus, He says, as far as you yourselves are concerned, you are clean. Yet you must also be sent for the cleansing of others, and this is expressed by the washing of your feet.

Therefore the washing does not give us the thought that the apostles were being cleansed from sins. According to the Lord's testimony, they are clean. Rather, it is a sign that they are being sent to preach, so that the purity granted them through the Master's teaching might be handed on to others.

For this reason Peter says, "Wash not only my feet, but also my head." That is, do not only send me to preach, but cleanse my head also through martyrdom.

Notice, if you will, how this is also accomplished even now. For even now there is a supper when, in the divine sacred rite, His divine Body and Blood lie before us.

What work, then, is required from each of us? Listen. All of us who have believed in Christ have within ourselves the Word of God and the Gospel preaching, for all of us have received Christ into our hearts.

But at this divine supper we must raise up this Word and remove from Him the garments that conceal Him. Such garments are avarice, vainglory, envy, and each of the other passions. When these press upon the Word of God within us, they burden Him.

Therefore, when the Word rises, the passions must be laid aside. Then, having become light, He can cleanse us through repentance.

For when the Word has risen and laid aside every weight and every worldly care, He will wash our thoughts. These thoughts learn from Him and follow Him. He will also wash our feet, that is, our active movements and our deeds.

But if anyone needs another cleansing and desires improvement in teaching and contemplation, let him say to the Lord: Lord, wash not only my feet, but also my hands and my head.

That is, cleanse not only my deeds, but also my "hands," so that I may guide others and undertake the good. Cleanse also my "head," so that in contemplation and theology I may have a pure and blameless understanding of divine things.

Thus, through confession we can be washed, so that we may worthily partake of the supper and not eat and drink judgment to ourselves (1 Cor 11:29).

Again observe this, and receive what was done as a pattern for profit. For although he said, "You shall never wash my feet," he at once withdrew from this intention.

He no longer thought about seeming truthful before us by keeping his words. He considered that he would suffer far greater and stronger harm by observing his words.

Therefore one must beware of speaking hastily and thoughtlessly. Nor should one strive with great effort to hold to a refusal made through levity.

If someone happens to say something hastily, and then, through insistence on fulfilling his word, harm results to something good and necessary, let him see in the saying now being interpreted that it is far better not to speak at all.

And if he has spoken, let him not persist vainly in what he pledged. Rather, let him strive to do what is profitable.

Everyone, I think, will say that it is better for us to incur blame for words than to allow harm to necessary things.

Let an oath be wholly absent from our speech, because of hasty and thoughtless words, and because changes sometimes occur by necessity.

Truly, as everyone will say, it is worthy of all emulation to have a cautious tongue, one rarely inclined toward what is improper.

And since this is difficult to attain, the very Word of God has shown this to us. For "no man can tame the tongue" (Jas 3:8), as it is said.

Let us speak without oaths. Then, if circumstances compel us to transgress something, the guilt will be less, and the fault will incur a lighter accusation.

Such a person, I think, will easily receive forbearance even from God, because levity is almost always present in our thoughts.

"Who can discern his errors?" as it is written (Ps 19:12). Or how could an earthly man not sin, if his speech readily turns toward everything? For our tongue is not easily restrained.

In one in whom the chief and essential thing has already been cleansed, his heart by faith and full devotion to the word of truth, there is no need for a new cleansing from sinful impurities.

So you also are clean. But since this could not be said of Judas, He added, "but not all."

If, further, the supposition is correct that the dispute about the disciples' primacy mentioned by the Evangelist Luke was the occasion for Jesus Christ to wash their feet, then here we shall have the following distinction between Luke and John.

The former intends to convey only the teaching of Jesus Christ on humility. Therefore he briefly points to the disciples' dispute about primacy as the occasion for this teaching, without explaining in detail how the dispute began and without recounting the washing of the feet.

The Evangelist John directs his chief attention to this: in washing the disciples' feet, besides the lesson of humility, the highest manifestation of Jesus Christ's love for "His own," who were to remain after Him in the world, was accomplished.

There was an enemy-disciple among His disciples, one who had already definitively resolved in his heart to betray his Lord. He Himself fully knew His divine authority and dignity.

Yet, wishing to teach the disciples self-denying love and humility by His own example, He takes upon Himself the task of a servant.

He washes the feet of His disciples, not excluding even His betrayer, and thereby shows His love for them to the end (1-3).

The reading γενομενου favors this supposition even more.

How Simon Peter is characterized in this particular trait! He resolves to go to the Lord over the waves and cries out, "I am perishing." He strikes the servant of the high priest with a knife and then flees.

He enters the courtyard where the Lord was judged, denies Him there, and leaves with bitter tears.

No one unclean, whoever he may be, can enter the Kingdom of God. The impurities of the soul are washed away only by the grace of Christ.

Therefore one cannot have a share in the Kingdom of Christ without being washed by the grace of Christ (Jn 3:3; Col 3:10).

Peter understood his Lord in this way and said: If so, Lord, then not only my feet, but also my head and my hands require cleansing. I am unclean from feet to head.

They had already been enlightened by the great light. They had already been freed from Jewish errors. They had cast out of their souls every wickedness. Thus Chrysostom, Homily 70.

This was the rebirth of which Isaiah prophesied, saying, "Wash yourselves and be clean; remove wickedness from your souls" (Isa 1:16, Slavonic translation).

The souls of the apostles had already been washed by the Word. The sin common to mankind had already been taken upon the shoulders of the divine Sacrifice.

Only that particular stain remained on them which no man avoids while passing through the dust of life's road.

A man's feet touch the earth and its dust, although his head and hands stretch upward toward the Most High.

A man, though "washed" by grace, still cannot be completely clean, like a traveler walking along a dusty road.

The Lord washes away this final dust, bending as a servant over the disciples' feet.

Such, it seems, is the meaning of the Lord's words with respect to each individual faithful disciple whose feet He washed.

But in the following verse, verse 11, the meaning of the Lord's words seems to embrace the whole Church. This Church is represented by Peter and all the apostles, including the betrayer.

Within the pure Church the betrayer represents a stain: "For this reason He said, 'You are not all clean.'"

Apart from the individual person, one must consider the purity of the Church. It cannot be shaken or defiled because one of its members proves defiled and unworthy to remain in its bosom.

The infected member is cut off precisely because in soul he does not belong to the Church. In the Church, the bonds uniting the members are spiritual bonds, not bonds of coercion.

He leaves the Church because he was not her son. Otherwise he would have remained in her: "They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have remained with us. But it was made manifest that they are not all of us" (1 Jn 2:19).

Such was the position of Judas the betrayer, leaving Christ's supper in order to rush into the abyss.