Holy Thursday- The Triduum begins

fresco by Giotto (a.k.a. Ambrogio Bondone; 1304-06)

"If I, therefore, the master and teacher, have washed your feet, you ought to wash one another’s feet. I have given you a model to follow, so that as I have done for you, you should also do" (Jn. 13,14-15).

I also learned something very cool from Fr. Jamie Martin, SJ, who, writing over on America magazine's In All Things blog, informs us that as of Tuesday, 18 March 2008, Louisville, Kentucky has a Thomas Merton Square and a plaque on the corner, Fourth and Walnut, on which he experienced his deep conversion that "was," to use Pater Tom's own words, which appear in, what for my money is his greatest book, Conjectures of the a Guilty Bystander: "like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world, the world of renunciation and supposed holiness". The world of which he wrote about as having a dream-like quality of 'separateness" and "spurious self-isolation", of course, was the world of his monastery. Far from pushing him away from his monastic vocation, this epiphany clarified and strengthened it, gave it more depth and meaning. You can't be holy alone, you can't be holy without without embracing the whole in some way, without washing feet.