List of points

When St Paul considers this mystery he too breaks into a joyful hymn which we can savour today word by word: 'Yours is to be the same mind which Christ Jesus showed. Though being by nature God, he did not consider being equal to God a thing to be coveted,' (for he was God by essence) 'but emptied himself, and took the nature of a slave, fashioned in the likeness of men, presenting himself to us in human form; and then he humbled himself, becoming obedient unto death, even to death on a cross.'

In his preaching, Our Lord Jesus Christ very often sets before our eyes the example of his own humility. 'Learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart,' so that you and I may know that there is no other way, and that only our sincere recognition of our nothingness is powerful enough to draw divine grace towards us. St Augustine says: 'It was for us that Jesus came to suffer hunger and to be our food, to suffer thirst and to be our drink, to be clothed with our mortality and to clothe us with immortality, to be poor so as to make us rich.'

Let us turn once again to the Gospels, and look at ourselves in our model, in Jesus Christ.

James and John, through their mother, have asked Jesus for places at his right and at his left. The other disciples are angry with them. What is Our Lord's answer to all this? 'Whoever has a mind to be great among you, must be your servant; and whoever has a mind to be first among you, must be the slave of all; for the Son of Man has not come to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.'

On another occasion they were going to Capharnaum. Jesus may have been walking ahead of them as he did on other days. 'And there, when they were in the house, he asked them, "What were you arguing about on the way?" But they kept silence, for on the way they had' once more 'been disputing among themselves which of them was the greatest. Then he sat down, and called the twelve to him, and said, "If anyone has a mind to be the first, he must be the last of all, and the servant of all." And he took a little child, and set him in the midst of them; and taking him into his arms, he said to them, "Whoever welcomes such a child as this in my name, welcomes me; and whoever welcomes me, welcomes, not me, but him who sent me."'

Doesn't this way Jesus has of doing things move us to love him? He teaches them the doctrine and then, to enable them to understand it, he gives them a living example. He calls a little child, one of the children running around the house, and he lovingly embraces him. How eloquent Our Lord's silence is! With it he has already said everything. He loves those who become as little children. He then adds that the reward for this simplicity, for this humility of spirit, is the joy of being able to embrace him and his Father who is in heaven.

When the time for his Passion draws near and Jesus wants to illustrate his kingship in a very vivid way, he makes a triumphant entry into Jerusalem, mounted on a donkey! It had been written that the Messiah was to be a king of humility: 'Tell the daughter of Sion: Behold your king comes to you, meek and seated on an ass, on a colt, the foal of a beast of burden.'

Now it is the Last Supper. Christ has prepared everything to bid farewell to his disciples, while they, for the umpteenth time, have become embroiled in an argument about which one of the chosen group is to be considered the greatest. Jesus then 'rising from supper, laid his garments aside, took a towel and put it about him. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the feet of his disciples, wiping them with the towel that girded him.'

Once again he preaches by example, by his deeds. In the presence of the disciples, who are arguing out of pride and vanity, Jesus bows down and gladly carries out the task of a servant. Afterwards, when he returns to the table, he explains to them: 'Do you understand what it is I have done to you? You call me Master and Lord, and you are right, it is what I am. Why then, if I have washed your feet, I who am the Master and the Lord, you in your turn ought to wash each other's feet.' This tactfulness of Our Lord moves me deeply. He does not say: 'If I do this, how much more ought you to?' He puts himself at their level, and he lovingly chides those men for their lack of generosity.

As he did with the first twelve, so also, with us, Our Lord can and does whisper in our ear, time and again, exemplum dedi vobis, I have given you an example of humility. I have become a slave, so that you too may learn to serve all men with a meek and humble heart.

Have you never wondered, out of a holy curiosity, just how Jesus carried through to its conclusion this outpouring of his love? Once again it is St Paul who gives us the answer: 'though being by nature God… he emptied himself, and took the nature of a slave, fashioned in the likeness of men'. My children, fill yourselves with wonder and gratitude at such a mystery and learn from it. All the power, all the majesty, all the beauty, all the infinite harmony of God, all his great and immeasurable riches, God whole and entire! was hidden for our benefit in the Humanity of Christ. The Almighty appears determined to eclipse his glory for a time, so as to make it easy for his creatures to approach their Redeemer.

'No man,' St John writes, 'has ever seen God; but now his only-begotten Son, who abides in the bosom of the Father, has himself revealed him,' appearing to the astonished gaze of men: first, as a new-born babe, in Bethlehem; then, as a child just like other children; later on, in the Temple, as a bright and alert 12-year old; and finally in the lovable and attractive image of the Teacher who stirred the hearts of the enthusiastic crowds that accompanied him.

We have only to consider a few traits of God's Love made flesh and our souls are touched by his generosity; they are set on fire and feel gently impelled to contrition for having been petty and selfish on so many occasions. Jesus does not mind lowering himself in order to raise us from our destitution to the dignity of being children of God and brothers of his. You and I, unlike him, often pride ourselves stupidly on the gifts and talents we have received, to the point of making them a pedestal from which to impose our will on others, as if the merits of our few relatively successful efforts derived from ourselves alone. 'What do you have that you have not received from God? And if what you have, you have received, why do you boast as if you had not received it?'

When we think of God's self-giving and the way he humbled himself — I am saying this so that each one of us can meditate on it and apply it to himself — then the vainglory and presumption of the proud man stands out as a truly hideous sin, for the very reason that such conduct is poles apart from the model given us by Jesus Christ. Think about it slowly: He, being God, humiliated himself; man, puffed up with self-love, tries to build himself up at any cost, without recognising that he is but a creature of clay, and poor clay at that.

We are here, consummati in unum! united in prayer and intention, and ready to begin this period of conversation with Our Lord, having renewed our desires to be effective instruments in his hands. Before Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament — how I love to make an act of explicit faith in the real presence of Our Lord in the Eucharist! — use your prayer to stir up in your hearts the eagerness to spread the fervour of their resolute beating to every part of the earth, to the utmost corner of the planet where even one man may be found generously spending his life in the service of God and souls. Thanks to the ineffable reality of the Communion of Saints, we are indeed all joined together — 'fellow workers', St John says — in the task of spreading the truth and the peace of the Lord.

It is right that we should think about how we are imitating the Master. We should pause and reflect so that we can learn directly from Our Lord's life some of the virtues which ought to shine out in our lives, if we are really anxious to spread the Kingdom of Christ.