[Continued from the previous Issue]

Our tastes control our choices. Each choice is positive as well as negative in itself. To say “yes" to one option is also to say "no" to its contrary option. You cannot, say, take the road to the right without rejecting the road to the left; cannot take a path of violence without rejecting the path of peace. Loving the world which results in cultivating worldly taste implies enmity to God. Then, everything related to the way of God begins to exasperate. This brings in its wake eagerness either to belittle the usefulness of spiritual practices or to improvise justifications for one's negativity to spiritual options. Our tastes define the scope of our freedom. We lose the freedom to choose possibilities contrary to the tastes we develop, no matter how beneficial they are to us.

Tastes are of two kinds: those imbibed from the immediate context (taste of the times) and those that pertain to the timeless flow of life (godly tastes). Wisdom demands that we test the former against the latter and, in case of any tension between them, choose the enduring in preference over the transitory, the ultimate over the immediate, lest we are seduced by the allurements of the present into becoming the fools of the future.

If we care for our personality formation at all we must be vigilant against the tastes we acquire. In this regard, we have a duty to be responsible stewards of our five senses; for they play a major role in forming our tastes. We have to be watchful about what we see, hear, smell, touch and taste, taking care, at the same time, to avoid puritanical excesses in respect of 'donts' in this regard. We need to be self-critical of the matrix of our self-employment. To see clearly what lurks in this sphere, consider the following. It is not a sin, one could argue, to develop a taste for fast food. The nutritious side of this question need not concern us here. Let us focus only on the relational aspect of the issue. Fast food is, by definition, food made and obtained from outside of one's home, which is an important aspect of its attractiveness. By itself, the food you get from these joints pretty disappointing! At these restaurants, you not only eat fast food but also hang out with your friends. Slowly and unknowingly, you lose your appreciation for your home. Home begins to seem a hopelessly dull place, where it is impossible to have a nice time. But it never occurs to you that the taste for fast food has inclined you towards devaluing your home; that you were, not only figuratively but also literally, led by the nose by fast food out of your home. This affects relationships at home. Communication at home comes to a gradual halt. In course of time, home, in extreme cases, approximates itself to a night shelter. On the other hand, those who are home-oriented enjoy home food and conversations, even as they remain open to relationships, interactions and enjoyments outside of it.

Taste regulates our inclinations. A taste for easy life robs us of our strength to accept possibilities. All on a sudden, we discover that we have 'no time' for these chores and burdens, even though we find enough time for self-indulgence. This is where spiritual discipline comes to our aid. It encourages us to cultivate counter-tastes. The taste for talkativeness, for instance, can be tamed with a taste for silence. Fasting can deliver us from the weakness for gluttonous and indiscriminate eating, and must be undertaken with this intent. Alms-giving is meant not to attract the attention of God to oneself or to win His favor but to liberate oneself from covetousness. The logic is that it is only by practicing and experiencing the joy of giving that we overcome the craving to grab and to hoard. The reason why the Word of God ascribes so much importance to obedience is that rebellious self-assertion is at the root of fallen human nature. Obedience liberates! Laziness, likewise, must be overcome with the discipline of hard work. Biblical spirituality insists on faithful and responsible work. We need to practice spiritual discipline to strengthen ourselves against the seductions of worldly tastes.

An important issue related to taste-formation is value judgments against which our Lord warns us explicitly. "Judge not", exhorts Jesus, "so that you are not judged;" for with what norms you judge, by the same you too will be judged. In an overwhelming majority of instances, we judge people not by objective norms, but by our tastes. As a rule those who cultivate cheap tastes are prompt and reckless in condemning others. Every act of judging others becomes, hence, also an act of self-indictment. We make a public display of the cheapness and shallowness of our own tastes through the judgments we pronounce on others.

An equally serious issue in this regard is the impediment that low tastes cause to our personal growth and greatness. Taste for a life of indulgence jeopardizes our spiritual growth. The parable of the Rich Fool is a sober warning on this count. It is for this reason that Paul exhorts us to set or minds on things high. Very likely the reader would have noticed that those whose tastes are low are also low on patience. They are easily provoked and flare up on trifles. As a matter of fact 'short temper' is nothing in itself. It is the byproduct of stunted spiritual growth induced by low and worldly tastes.

In the light of the above, it should be obvious that cultivating wholesome tastes in children is a key parental and pastoral duty. A very effective way of doing this is by training children in the discipline of reading and reflecting on the Word of God. No parent needs to worry about a child who grows into the kind of taste that psalmist had. To him the Word of God was sweeter than honey and the honeycomb. A taste for reading demanding texts that caters to mental and spiritual growth, as against reading only for pleasure, needs to be cultivated early enough. In this, we should warn ourselves against naive and untested assumptions about what and how much children can assimilate. A great deal depends on the taste we enable our children to cultivate. But, then, no parent can expect children to imbibe higher tastes, unless they walk that way ahead and lead their children by example.

What does it mean, then, to express our love for each other to the full extent?

The very first thing we notice about this celebrated and evocative event the Fellowship Meal - is that it cannot be stereotyped. It is sure to surprise everyone that this ceremonial meal is, shall I say, disrupted by Jesus who organized it with meticulous forethought. It was a ritual, after all; and a ritual must follow its strict course. John makes it a point to say that it was while the meal was in progress that Jesus gets up to wash the feet of his disciples. The very thought of a Rabbi washing the feet of his disciples was shocking, especially in the tradition-bound hierarchical society of the times.

The response of Peter in the event serves the purpose, mainly, of indicating how surprising Jesus' conduct was to everyone present. Let us try and understand the nature of this shock. Jesus does two things here. First, he organizes a ritual meal. Second, he brings into it a routine activity: that of serving, in the form of feet washing. Jesus, in other words, enlarges the matrix of the ritual to include the routine also. The message that emerges from this structure is that expressing love to the full extent involves integrating the ritual of love with routine life. What we do, almost always, is to polarize the two. We embed ourselves in a routine of life marked for his lovelessness, but allocate occasional slots for the ritual of love. We make much of love on occasions like the happy birthdays of our dear ones. Other that that, love is all but forgotten in the hard grind of life. So we must have Mother's Day, Father's Day, Valentines’ Day, and anniversary days, to let love have its due, sporadically. We never express love to the full extent. That is as good as saying that we do not express love at all; for love is nothing if not expressed to the full extent.

The fullness of everything in life includes ritual and routine. Cooking may be seen, for instance, as routine; but serving it tastefully is a ritual, as in the case of a ceremonial meal. The more spiritual an act, the more ritual and routine become one in it. A case in point is the way Mary of Bethany expressed her love for Jesus (John 12:1-10). On the face of it, it is an extravagant ritual; but to her it is also a routine. Even if she were to express her love for Jesus a thousand times she would still have put her very best into it, each time. It is impossible to separate ritual from routine in the expression of her love. We cannot dispense with ritual altogether; nor should we want to. To do so is to approximate life to the mechanical. Yet, such is the domination of the routine of life today that even the rituals of love are reduced to mere routines. For most people the Sunday Eucharist is little more than a religious routine.

That is not all. Even intimate human relationships are being increasingly routinized at the present time. The living room is routinely done up, cleaned and aired. But the ritual of spending quality time together in the living room is becoming rarer and rarer. The living room is the most expensive but also the most under-utilized part of our homes today. Also, there is no life in our living rooms. Between work and tired sleep little space is left for rituals of love to survive. No wonder children and young adults assume they can have good times only outside their homes! The poverty of our homes is that love to the full extent is rarely expressed there. Home is all routine and those famished for the ritual of love look elsewhere.

All of us want to love; but none of us can claim, with any degree of certainty, that we love to the full extent. That is why we are nagged inwardly by the uncertainty whether or not we have ever loved! It is not because we do not want to love that we don't. but because we do not bother to love to the full extent.

The reason why we fall short of expressing love to the full extent is that we exclude love from the routine of life. The very word 'routine' sounds, somehow, boring and loveless! Well, it does not have to be. But we have chosen to have it so. The routine too can catch fire, as the bush in Midian did in front of Moses, if only we could grow towards the fullness of love.

Let us see what it means to integrate the ritual of love with the routine of life.

The very first thing that Jesus does, in this event, is to get up! He abandons the seat of pre-eminence. That is symbolic and significant. While we fondle love in the rituals we observe, we covet power, not love that drives the systems and institutions, including family that we maintain. We limit love to the rituals of life and organize the routine of life in terms of power alone. The ritual of love calls for a ceremonial order; but, because we are oriented to power, we degrade this order into a hierarchy. Hierarchy inhibits love and togetherness. Hierarchy permits us to be together, but it devalues togetherness. Togetherness presupposes equality or worth, if not identity of roles. By getting up and abandoning his seat, Jesus renounces the mindset of hierarchy. You cannot get addicted to the seat of power and serve at the same time. A man cannot be the "head" of his wife in a hierarchical sense and love his wife to the full extent or expect to be loved to the full extent. Nor can a wife love her husband to the full extent if he succumbs to the logic of hierarchy. "Headship", as understood in the Bible, is sacramental and it is to be exercised within the ritual of love. By getting up, Jesus establishes a link between the ritual of love and the routine of life.

Secondly, Jesus puts on the attire of service. He takes off His outer clothing and wraps a towel around his waist, It would not be appropriate to imagine, for a moment, a kitchen apron on Jesus. It is not the specifics of the dress that matter, but the intent. Jesus upholds the honor and dignity of service, of labor, through this gesture. It is not difficult for people to see that there is love in organizing a ceremonial meal. But, what about feet-washing? Can love be expressed in this manner? As a matter of fact, feet-washing may express love better than a ceremonial meal, depending on the context. Of course, the same can be done in a loveless fashion, as slaves do. Love makes the difference between service and slavery. Slavery is service devoid of ritual. It is nothing but routine.

Love bridges ritual with the routine of life. It is not only that the servant’s towel finds its way into the ritual of this fellowship meal. It is also that the ceremonial cloths, by inference, should find their way also into the kitchen as well. The tragedy is that we have exiled the outer clothing of ritual from the routine in the kitchen. A wife who 'love to the full extent', however, understands the wisdom of draping herself in the ceremonial clothes of love even in the kitchen. That will ensure that whatever she cooks becomes a feast of love. When she offers this fellowship meal to the man who sits at the head of the table, how can he not get up and wash her feet with the waters of beatific gratitude? It takes a partnership of love to express love to the full extent.

This sounds odd and awkward only because we are conditioned in the logic of power. Love is like God. We confine God to a few hours each week. The rest of the time God is irrelevant to our life for all practical purposes, unless, of course, we get into serious trouble in between! So it is with love in respect of the routine of life. It is mostly barren of love.

The spiritual challenge, however, is to bring the ritual of love into this routine and transform it into a sacrament of fellowship and companionship.

What does it mean to express the full extent of love?