Father Cyprian Consiglio, OSB Cam.

There’s a beautiful chant I learned in India that goes like this:

The root of meditation is the image of the guru;
the root of worship is the feet of the guru;
the root of mantra is the word of the guru;
the root of salvation is the grace of the guru.

I always think of this chant when I read that beautiful story of the woman washing Jesus’ feet in the Gospel of Luke. I got very Ignatian in my meditation and was imagining myself right there, watching this woman creep up behind Jesus, weep her tears all over his feet, then wipe them with her hair, and pour oil over them.

There’s a beautiful custom in some parts of the world, and especially in India, of reverencing the feet of someone who is considered to be holy. This act of obeisance is rather typical. We see other people throwing themselves at Jesus’ feet throughout the Gospels. But the woman in the Gospel of Luke adds something to it—unabashed love! That’s what Jesus recognizes in her. And Jesus of course can recognize this, because it is “like calling to like”—this is how Jesus looks at the world.

I remind you of that little phrase that gets added to the story of the rich young man in the Gospel of Mark: Jesus looked at him with love. I think we can safely assume that Jesus looked at everybody with love, including this woman who is reported to have been steeped in sin. It didn’t matter to Jesus, and she knew it. The Pharisee instead was like “a virgin with no oil in his lamp,” to borrow a phrase from St. Augustine, righteous but with no love.

I heard someone give a talk about the guru principle once and he was asked, “How do you know who is to be your guru?” And the answer was, “Because you fall in love.” You fall I love with your guru. That’s kind of embarrassing, but we are not far off when we read what the great mystics write about their love for their teachers or for God’s own self. The great Sufi poets like Rabi’a or Rumi or Hafez, and certainly the poets of bridal mysticism in the Christian tradition and the Song of Songs in the Jewish tradition who capture the absolute vulnerability that happens when we fall in love, when all our boundaries melt and we see who we are and who we could be and who what we want. A fount of rather indiscriminate desire bursts up in us.

I think falling in love is the best image here in relation to Jesus, in relation to God, because as I understand it (and I confess that I probably don’t…) falling in love is somehow as much about seeing the rest of ourselves as it is about the other, at least as the Greeks and the Jungians understand it. And the same thing applies to Jesus. What we see in Jesus is who we could be, should be, and who we are not. And when the clear light of that love shines in the inner room of our heart, all of the dusty corners and cracking paint and dirty windows show up for just what they are. We might feel ashamed. And/or we also might feel a longing to be who we could be and should be. That being in love can call out our best self.

There’s a moment in the Mass, the scriptural basis for which is in the story of the centurion in the Gospel of Luke (7:1-10), when we say, “Lord, I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word and I shall be healed.” One day after Mass, a woman asked me, “You’re always saying all these wonderful things about how beautiful we are and about our dignity in the eyes of God. Well if we are so beautiful and dignified, how come at Mass we say, ‘O Lord, I am not worthy…?’ And if I had thought about it for a moment I might not have answered well, but without thinking I just blurted out, “Because as soon as we say, ‘I’m not worthy’ God says, ‘Oh, yes, you are.”

The root of worship is the feet of the guru. The beginning of worship is throwing ourselves at the feet of the Lord. The beginning of worship is recognizing as Alcoholics Anonymous says, “There is a God and it’s not you.” The beginning of worship is realizing that we are branches on the vine and that we have no separate existence apart from the vine, which is our source. The beginning of worship is also the recognition of just the plain simple truth of who we are, with all of our dusty corners and leaky pipes and dirty windows, and recognizing that there is something else we are called to and can be.

The last line of that chant is important too: the root of salvation is grace. As Paul says, “I am unfit to even be called an apostle… but I am what I am by the grace of God (1 Cor. 15:9-10).” The beginning of worship is throwing ourselves before that great mystery in unabashed love and indiscriminate longing with faith and hope that grace will pour over us and into us and back out of us if we make ourselves vulnerable and open and receptive and humble.

And as soon as we do, it’s Holy Thursday all over again, and Jesus is wrapping a towel around his waist and throwing himself at our feet.