When it comes to inspiring people’s actions, Jesus knew that being an example to others is more important than “a flood of words,” Pope Francis said.
Jesus washing his disciples’ feet at the Last Supper “is undoubtedly an eloquent symbol of the Beatitudes proclaimed by the Lord in the Sermon on the Mount and of their concrete expression in works of mercy,” the pope said in a written message on 7th March.
“With this gesture, the Lord wanted to leave us ‘an example so that you may do as I have done,'” he wrote in the message to experts and scholars taking part in a workshop organised by the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences.
To mark the 750th anniversary of St. Thomas Aquinas’ death, the academy organised a meeting from 7th-8th March to discuss the saint’s work on natural law and social ontology. St. Aquinas “resolutely upholds the priority of works of mercy,” he wrote.
“In these years of my Pontificate, I have sought to privilege the gesture of foot washing, following the example of Jesus who at the Last Supper took off his cloak and washed his disciples’ feet one by one,” the pope wrote.
“Indeed, as Aquinas teaches, with such an extraordinary action, Christ ‘showed all the works of mercy,'” he wrote. “Jesus knew that when it comes to inspiring human action, examples are more important than a flood of words.”