Be holy, for I, the LORD, your God, am holy.
We know that the Lord has called us and not only a select few saints to be holy as he the Lord is holy. But in what does this holiness consist? Is it only, as we might imagine from the fact that the passage comes from Leviticus, concerned with right performance of religious ritual? No! Although some of the omitted verses do contain a prohibition of idolatry and some simple provisions about sacrifice much more of the context is along the lines of what we see in the first reading, justice toward our neighbors. We should never imagine a holiness that can exist between an individual and God alone, in isolation from the other women and men created by God in his image and likeness.
If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen (see First John 4:20).
In loving our neighbor we also at the same time show love to God in whose image they were made, and who loves them more than we ever could hope to do. This is part of why holiness requires a prohibition on idolatry. For when we subvert our idea of God to some lesser created thing it is not God that suffers. It is we ourselves as we no longer recognize his image in ourselves or in others. We make ourselves like the lifeless idols we serve rather than the dynamic and uncontainable source of life that is found only in God himself.
For I was hungry and you gave me food,
I was thirsty and you gave me drink,
a stranger and you welcomed me,
naked and you clothed me,
ill and you cared for me,
in prison and you visited me.'
Jesus did not diminish the Old Testament call to holiness, but rather elevated it by placing himself at the very center of it. His purpose was to unite all people of every status, race, and gender into one in himself (see Galatians 3:28). Jesus, before any of us ever began to even consider holiness or love, was already loving everyone as himself more profoundly than we can imagine. Even the incarnation by which he himself chose to become one of us and share our lot was already implicit proof of this intention. But what Jesus did we are called to imitate. And now it is not only a response to our neighbor, much less to a command, but to the presence of Jesus himself, potentially or actually within the "least brothers" of his. We see just how profoundly real this connection is when he appeared to Saul on the Damascus road.
And he said, “Who are you, Lord?” And he said, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting (see Acts 9:5).
Every encounter with the least of our brothers and sisters is an opportunity to discover Christ. But perhaps it remains difficult for us to recognize him in this distressing disguise. We can take heed of the advice given by Mother Teresa who was convinced that it was her adoration of the Blessed Sacrament that gave her the strength and insight to recognize the face of God in everyone.
"Seeking the face of God in everything, everyone, all the time, and his hand in every happening; This is what it means to be contemplative in the heart of the world. Seeing and adoring the presence of Jesus, especially in the lowly appearance of bread, and in the distressing disguise of the poor."
The call to holiness is, again, not optional extra credit for overachievers. It is a requirement for all of us, without which no one can see God (see Hebrews 12:14). But we ourselves tend to be stubborn and slow to change, more like goats than sheep. What we need to attain this holiness is not prodigious effort so much as docility to Jesus who is himself the Good Shepherd and who alone can unite all his sheep in one fold.
And he will separate them one from another,
as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.
He will place the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.
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