Pope leads Holy Thursday services of the Last Supper

(March 22, 2008) Pope Benedict XVI washed the feet of a dozen priests in a Holy Thursday Mass to symbolize humility and urged people to set aside any rancour toward others. Part of Holy Week tradition, the Holy Thursday ceremony in St. John in Lateran commemorates Jesus' last supper with his 12 apostles on the evening before his Good Friday crucifixion and death. With the Mass of the Lord's Supper, the Pontiff began the three-day Easter triduum that commemorates the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
In his homily at the evening Mass of the Lord's Supper, Pope Benedict described Jesus' washing the feet of his apostles as a kind of purification whose symbolism is still valid today. “Day after day, “the Pope said, “we are covered with various forms of filth, with empty words, prejudices and distorted and altered wisdom; a multiplicity of falsehood continuously seeps into our most inner being.” "All this obscures and contaminates our soul, it threatens us with being incompetence with regard to the truth or the good," the Pope said, adding, “We must wash each other's feet also in the sense that we pardon each other anew. Don't let rancour toward each other poison our soul.”
The Holy Father said Christ synthesized charity and purification with the gesture of washing the feet of his disciples. "If we take the words of Jesus with an attentive heart, they become true cleansers, purifiers of the soul, of the interior of man," the Pontiff said. "This is what the Gospel of the washing of the feet invites us to: allow ourselves to be washed again with this pure water, to be capable of communion with God and with our brothers and sisters."
Then the 80-year-old pontiff washed a foot of each of 12, white-robed priests sitting in a row on a raised platform. He poured water from a gold-plated pitcher over each bare foot extended over a basin and, with a white cloth, dabbed the feet dry. The collection of Holy Thursday was destined for an orphanage in Havana, Cuba.
Earlier in the morning, at the Holy Thursday Chrism Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica, Pope Benedict urged priests to believe, think and speak with the Church. He encouraged them to renew their "yes" to the call of God reminding them the essence of priestly ministry is service. The Chrism Mass is the celebration of the institution of priesthood by Christ at the Last Supper. It is a day when priests of a diocese gather around their bishop to celebrate their priesthood. The Pope’s Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica brought together some 1,600 priests, and cardinals and bishops to renew the promises they made on the day of their ordination.
According to the Old Testament, the Holy Father explained, there are two tasks that define the essence of the priestly ministry: to be present before the Lord and to serve. "To be present before the Lord should always be, in its depths, to take charge of mankind before the Lord who, for his part, takes charge of all of us before the Father," he said. In the second place, the Pontiff said, the priest should serve. He said that this service is manifested in a concrete way in the Eucharistic celebration. There, the Pope said, what the priest does "is serve, to complete a service to God and a service to man. The homage that Christ offered to the Father consisted in giving himself unto the end for man. The priest should unite himself with this homage, with this service."