Religion And The Corona Pandemic

Compare the faith healers with our health workers. The latter risk their life for others, undeterred even by sporadic eruptions of ingratitude from the very people they serve

- Valson Thampu

A crisis is like a wind. It separates chaff from grain. Till then, they seem similar. The need to separate them is keenest with regard to sowing. The key difference between chaff and grain is that the former is irrelevant to human needs.

My attention was drawn the other day to the ‘feet-washing ceremony’ conducted in a church in Kerala, commemorating what Jesus did at the Last Supper. He washed the feet of his disciples to cure them of a disease endemic in humans: vainglorious obsession with hierarchy. Jesus washed their feet, not because their feet were stinking, but because something was rotting in their souls. It was anything but a ritual. It was a spiritual surgery. But priests are at home only in rituals. So, for centuries this soul-surgery of feet-washing had been degraded into a priestly ritual, not only emptying it of its ethical significance but also contaminating it with priestly hypocrisy. Feet washing is the last thing a bishop or priest would do, if he can help it.

All the same, it has become a priestly addiction. But its indulgence this year is upstaged by the virus. Human feet are not available to be washed. Never mind, a way out can be found: wash the feet of dolls! Once meaning is drained out of a ritual, only its mechanism remains. It makes little difference if the feet washed is organic or plastic. On Maundy Thursday, a certain number of feet must be washed. They have been. Ask the dolls, if you can’t believe this.