If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet; you also ought to wash one another's feet.
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Cyprian of Carthage
AD 258
For then He washed His disciples' feet, saying, "If I, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet, ye ought also to wash one another's feet. For I have given you an example, that ye should do as I have done to you.".
Of this same thing in the Gospel according to John: "If I have washed your feet, being your Master and Lord, ye also ought to wash the feet of others. For I have given you an example, that as I have done, ye also should do to others."
You also ought to wash one another's feet. Not that he made this a standing precept according to the letter; but designed it as a lesson of humility. We find this custom literally observed in several churches, as it is now done every year by diverse prelates, and by Christian kings and princes. (Witham)
He gives us an example of a more elevated act of virtue, that we may at least learn to practise the lower degrees of it. For he indeed was their Lord, but when we perform this office, we can but do it to our fellow-servants. (St. Chrysostom, hom. lxx. in Joan.)
This it is, blessed Peter, which you were ignorant of, but which he promises to explain afterwards. (St. Augustine, tract. 58. in Joan.)
And yet it is not the same thing, for He is Lord and Master, but you are fellow-servants one of another. What means then the as? With the same zeal. For on this account He takes instances from greater actions that we may, if so be, perform the less. Thus schoolmasters write the letters for children very beautifully, that they may come to imitate them though but in an inferior manner. Where now are they who spit on their fellow-servants? Where now they who demand honors? Christ washed the feet of the traitor, the sacrilegious, the thief, and that close to the time of the betrayal, and incurable as he was, made him a partaker of His table; and are you highminded, and do you draw up your eyebrows? Let us then wash one another's feet, says some one, then we must wash those of our domestics. And what great thing if we do wash even those of our domestics? In our case slave and free is a difference of words; but there an actual reality. For by nature He was Lord and we servants, yet even thi...
