Monday in the First Week of Lent, March 7, 2022

Leviticus 19:1-2, 11-18

The Lord said to Moses, “Speak to the whole assembly of the children of Israel and tell them: Be holy, for I, the Lord, your God, am holy.  You shall not steal. You shall not lie or speak falsely to one another. You shall not swear falsely by my name, thus profaning the name of your God. I am the Lord.  You shall not defraud or rob your neighbor. You shall not withhold overnight the wages of your day laborer. You shall not curse the deaf, or put a stumbling block in front of the blind, but you shall fear your God. I am the Lord.  You shall not act dishonestly in rendering judgment. Show neither partiality to the weak nor deference to the mighty, but judge your fellow men justly. You shall not go about spreading slander among your kin; nor shall you stand by idly when your neighbor’s life is at stake. I am the Lord.  You shall not bear hatred for your brother in your heart. Though you may have to reprove him, do not incur sin because of him. Take no revenge and cherish no grudge against your fellow countrymen. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord.”

The First Reading for today’s Mass is drawn from a section of the Mosaic Law.  It is profitable to examine it since the Son of God came to fulfill it.  In learning what he came to fulfill, we understand better what he did, and how we can live the perfected Law which he has given us.

This section of the Law begins with Almighty God telling the people, “Be holy, for I, the Lord, your God, am holy.”  The basis for the Law is to be holy, to resemble the Lord to the degree that we can in holiness.  The Hebrew word translated here as “holy” is qodesh, which also means “separated” or “set apart”.  In light of this, we may do better in perceiving the full meaning of what is commanding by translating this verse as, Be sacred, for I, the Lord, your God, am sacred.  To be “sacred” means to be taken from common things and dedicated solely for the use of God, who is himself sacred because there is none remotely like him.  “Sacred” also works better in this instance because the tendency is to think of “holy” in moral terms: a saint is holy because the saint has refrained from sin and practiced virtue.  “Sacred” things and persons are seen as such by virtue of their existence or their belonging exclusively to God.  The Lord Jesus fulfills this for us so that we may become members of his very Body.

“Be holy, for I, the Lord, your God, am holy.”  God also tells us the reason we are to be sacred: for his sake.  For instance, in the verse, “You shall not go about spreading slander among your kin; nor shall you stand by idly when your neighbor’s life is at stake. I am the Lord”, God does not provide an extrinsic reason for obeying him.  Instead, he says, “I am the Lord.”  He does not slander or stand idly by, and therefore we must not either.  It is sheerly for his sake that we act in accord with his injunctions.

Speaking in this way, God prepares us for the words of his Son, fulfilling his own words: “Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me” (Matthew 25, 40).  Now, not only do we see that we should obey the Lord for his own sake, but that our actions are ultimately directed to him, as he identifies himself with these “least brothers” through his love for them, for the Lord died for us all.  This knowledge permits us to see the good we do for others as a personal gift we offer Jesus by which in serving the Sacred one, we become sacred too.  

We who belong to God and are called to sacredness do well also in reflecting on St. Peter’s definition of what it means for us to be sacred: “You are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a purchased people: that you may declare his virtues, who hath called you out of darkness into his marvelous light” (1 Peter 2, 9).