Foot Washing: More to Pour

Author: Andrew Comiskey
March 06, 2024

‘I will pour out on you a spirit of grace and supplication…
We will look upon the One we have pierced and will mourn as one grieves for an only child…
On that day, I’ll open a fountain to cleanse you from sin and impurity;
on that day, I’ll banish the idols from the land…
On that day, I’ll remove both the prophets and the spirit of impurity from the land…
On that day, every prophet will be ashamed of his prophetic vision.
He will say, “I am not a prophet, I am a farmer.”
When asked about the wounds on his body, he will answer:
“These wounds I was given at the house of my friends’” (Zechariah 12:10-13:6).

‘The water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life’ (Jn. 4:13).

Sexual temptation is a gift. Flurries of illicit desire remind me of what I need (friends), who I love (Annette), and Whose I am (Jesus’). He died to break lust’s domination and lives to rouse Reality, the supremacy of His Cross amid the dry uneven ground of my humanity.

Jesus’ flood of Blood and Water primes me to praise Him. And to pour out this ‘liquid love’ to others. How could I not? Jesus’ weakness unto death turned around the enemy’s scheme to destroy me through my weakness.

Who is like Him? My self-giving flows from gratitude. He gave all to gain me! Do what I do. When tempted, praise Him who overflows with Divine Mercy for your weak self. Then pour out to the thirsty one next to you!

Your cues may be different. It may be a physical weakness, an emotional affliction, a different type of moral vulnerability. But our authority is the same. Jesus shows His love for us by pouring out His best. That’s the meaning of the Greek ‘ecstasy’—'to come out of oneself.’ No better way to describe ‘the sudden flow of blood and water’ released from Jesus’ side when one of the soldiers pierced Him with a spear (Jn. 19:34).

Jesus’ pouring out His life at Calvary becomes our new life. ‘What can be purer than such Blood?’ exudes St. Augustine. ‘What can be more health-giving than such a wound?’  

Zechariah got this. He grasped the genius of the suffering servant to turn around demonic schemes to damn God’s people through their sin. We pierce Him with our transgressions; He opens a ‘fountain to cleanse us from sin and impurity.’ Get it? We wreck Him in wickedness then His wounds bleed red to cleanse us (Water), transfuse us with new life (Blood), and empower us (Spirit) to endure temptation effectively.

You think God hasn’t made a way for you in your misery? Welcome this Merciful Fountain and live!  

We must own that misery, the poverty of our sin-sickness. We grieve. Anything less would be inhuman, a gnostic denial of reality, little ‘r.’ But Jesus liberates original dignity from the web of sin.  Unlike Margaret whom Gerard Manley Hopkins exhorts as she weeps over common losses, ‘It’s the blight man was born for; it is Margaret you mourn for,’ (“Spring and Fall”) we do no such thing. Our grief surpasses our little worlds of sorrow and primes His fountain.

We become the essence of Divine Mercy and pour out to the poor.

Over the last year, my brother and I tended to a relative who after decades of drugs suffered a massive stroke that left her psychotic and reduced to long-term care. I visited her as often as I could. Her faith had been weak, matched only by the bleakness of her new ‘resting place.’

I grieved for her and struggled to mount an offense. One morning, gazing upon the Divine Mercy image, I felt Jesus say: ‘My mercy, your only hope—My mercy, her only hope…’ At that moment, I determined to make her desert a place of springs, a fountain of Life to wash through her pathetic digs. I transferred my Divine Mercy pic within view of her restless gaze; amid the moans and screams, I insisted prayerfully on a shift in the atmosphere that might transform a death house to an altar where Jesus is looked upon and gives life.

He did. Over that year, our friend had lucid glimpses of Jesus and died peacefully in His mercy. Her addiction nearly killed her but Merciful Jesus—the One we pierced—had the last word. He released a fountain that welcomed her home.   

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