Irenaeus of Lyons · a new plain-English translation from the original language
Why the Lord washed the feet of the disciples, and why while they were reclining; and that he himself is shown to be God before all things, in like manner. In the last times, when the fullness of the time of liberty had come, the Word himself, in his own person, washed away the stains of the daughters of Zion, washing with his own hands the feet of the disciples. For this is the goal toward which the human race is built up by God: that just as in the beginning, through the first man, we were all reduced to servitude to the debt of death, so at the last, through the last man, all who from the beginning were his disciples, cleansed and washed from the things of death, should come into the life of God. For the one who bathed the disciples' feet made the entire body holy, bringing it to a state of cleanness. Wherefore also he ministered food to them as they reclined, signifying those who were reclining upon the earth, to whom he came to minister life. As Jeremiah says: The Holy One of Israel remembered his dead, who had fallen asleep in the land of burial, and he went down to them, to preach to them his salvation, to save them. For this reason too the eyes of the disciples grew heavy as Christ came to his passion; and finding them asleep, the Lord first let them be, showing God's patience with the sleep of men; then, coming a second time, he roused them and raised them up, showing that his passion is the awakening of the sleeping disciples, for whose sake he likewise went down into the earth's lower regions, to witness for himself what remained incomplete within the created order, concerning which he also told his disciples: Many prophets and just men longed to behold and to listen to what you now behold and listen to.
For it was not for the sake of those alone who believed in him in the times of Tiberius Caesar that Christ came; nor was it for the sake of those alone who are now living men that the Father made his providence; but for the sake of absolutely all men, who from the beginning, each according to his own capacity, in his own generation, both feared and loved God, and lived justly and piously toward their neighbors, and longed to behold Christ and to listen to his voice. Wherefore he will, at his second coming, first rouse from sleep all such as these, and will raise up both them and the rest who are to be judged, and will establish them in his kingdom. For there is indeed one God, who directed the patriarchs in his arrangements, and justified the circumcision by faith, and the uncircumcision through faith. For just as we were prefigured and foretold beforehand in the men of old, so in turn those men find their true likeness in us, namely within the Church, and obtain the reward owed for that on which they labored — concerning which he said, You have not labored: others have labored, and you have entered into their labor. For this reason the Lord said to his disciples: Behold, I say to you, lift up your eyes and see the fields, for they are white for the harvest. For the reaper receives wages and gathers fruit for eternal life, so that both the one who sows and the one who reaps may rejoice together. For in this the saying is true, that one is the one who sows, and another the one who reaps. For I sent you to reap that on which you did not labor; others have labored, and you have entered into their labor. Who then are they who labored, who served the arrangements of God? It is clear that they were the patriarchs and the prophets, who also prefigured our faith beforehand, and sowed upon the earth the coming of the Son of God, who this one would be and of what sort: so that those who were to be the later men, having the fear of God, might readily receive the coming of Christ, instructed beforehand by the prophets. And for this reason, when Joseph learned that Mary was with child, and thought to put her away secretly, an angel said to him in a dream: Do not be afraid to take Mary your wife; for that which is in her is of the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins. And he added, persuading him: Now all this took place, that what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet might be fulfilled, saying: Behold, a virgin shall conceive in her womb, and bear a son, and his name will be given as Emmanuel — convincing him through this word from the prophet, and excusing Mary, showing that she was the same one who had been foretold by Isaiah as the virgin who would bear Emmanuel. Wherefore Joseph, persuaded without doubting, took Mary to himself, and in all the rest of Christ's upbringing gladly rendered his service, even undertaking the journey into Egypt, and returning from there, and the removal to Nazareth. In fact, those who did not know the Scriptures, nor God's promise, nor the arrangement concerning Christ, called him, as a boy, the son of Joseph. For this reason too the Lord himself, in Capernaum, read out Isaiah's prophecies: The Spirit of the Lord rests upon me, and for this cause he has anointed me; he has dispatched me to bring good news to the destitute, to mend the brokenhearted, to announce liberty to those held captive, and sight restored to those who cannot see. And showing himself to be the one foretold by the prophecy of Isaiah, he said to them: Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.
Because of this Philip too, when he found the Ethiopian queen's eunuch reading the passage that stands written: "Like a sheep he was brought to slaughter, and like a lamb voiceless before the one shearing it, in this way he did not open his mouth; in his lowly state his sentence was carried off" — and everything further that the prophet had recorded touching his suffering, his arrival in the flesh, and the contempt shown him by those refusing to believe — had no trouble bringing him to faith that this was Christ Jesus, crucified under Pontius Pilate, who bore all that the prophet had announced beforehand, and who is the Son of God granting life without end to mankind. The moment he baptized him, he withdrew from his side. Nothing further remained wanting for one already schooled in advance by the prophets: he was not short of acquaintance with God the Father, nor with the ordering of his own behavior, but simply had not yet learned of the Son of God's arrival; and having grasped it in short order, he continued his journey rejoicing, appointed to proclaim Christ's arrival in Ethiopia. On this account Philip needed little effort over him, since the prophets had already made him ready beforehand in reverence for God. And on this same account the apostles too, collecting the scattered sheep of Israel's house, spoke to them from the Scriptures, demonstrating that this crucified Jesus is the Christ, God's living Son; and they won over a vast crowd who already, all the same, held reverence for God — and in a single day three thousand, then four thousand, then five thousand persons received baptism.