service files washing_of_the_feet.md

INTRODUCTION

After the prayer behind the ambo, the Priest comes out, changed as he is, with lights and incense, outside the main doors of the church, the basin for the Washing having been got ready by the Ecclesiarch. Twelve brethren having been appointed who are to be washed by the Superior, among whom must be included the Porter and the Bursar, we assemble with the Priest, singing Psalm 50. When this is over we sing the 5th Ode of the Canon of Great Thursday.

The ceremony of the Washing of the Feet on Holy Thursday is very ancient, and is common to both East and West. In English it is the origin of the name ’Maundy Thursday’, from the Latin ’mandatum’, ’commandment’, which is used in the Vulgate of Saint John’s Gospel, ’mandatum nouum do uobis’, ’a new commandment I give you’. In the Latin the ceremony still forms part of the regular Holy Weeks services and in England, in a survival of pre-reformation Catholicism, the monarch still distributes specially purses of minted ’Maundy Money’ on this day, though there is no longer any washing of actual feet. In the fourth century the ’Pedilauium’, ’Footwashing’ formed part of the rite of Baptism at Milan, where it followed the Chrismation. Saint Ambrose remarks that the ceremony, as part of Baptism, was unknown in Rome. In the East it is still performed on Holy Thursday in the Armenian Church, but in the Byzantine Rite it is nowadays confined to some cathedrals and monasteries. On Patmos the monks of the great monastery perform the ceremony in the open air in the middle of the village.

This provisional version has been made from the text in the Greek Mega Euchologion, since the rite is no longer included in the printed Triodia in either Greek or Slavonic. In the French version published by P. Denis Guillaume the first Gospel is set out in dramatic form, with the Abbot speaking the words of Christ and the Bursar those of Saint Peter. Without at least a Deacon to read the Gospel while the Priest does the actual washing, it is difficult to perform the ceremony correctly, which may be one reason why it has fallen into desuetude.

SERVICE OF THE DIVINE AND SACRED WASHING