Be Holy

A Reflection on the First Reading for Sunday February 19th, 2023:
Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time

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Leviticus
19.1-2, 17-18

The Lord spoke to Moses:
“Speak to all the congregation of the children of Israel
and say to them:
‘You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.
You shall not hate in your heart anyone of your kin;
you shall reprove your neighbour,
or you will incur guilt yourself.
You shall not take vengeance
or bear a grudge against any of your people,
but you shall love your neighbour as yourself:
I am the Lord.’”

Like many of you, I have made a conscious and firm choice to continue to mature in faith. I want to keep going (and, well, growing). There’s a lot to learn; I’ll never be done learning no matter how long I live. 

Every so often, I encounter an area of my faith where I haven’t grown in donkey’s years — and, when I read the First Reading for this Sunday, it happened again. 

Leviticus says: “You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.” When I began to reflect on that line, my mind was instantly populated with stereotypical images of holy people: bodies draped in modest robes; shoulders languid with world weariness; faces pallid, upturned and quietly anguished. I can’t help grinning at my notions, they’re so … what’s the word … juvenile, maybe. Clearly, I needed a refresh on what it means to be holy. So, I got to work.

I read widely, and I’m satisfied that the Hebrew word for “holy” means neither languid nor anguished. The Hebrew word for holy means “set apart.” Of course, my next questions were: set apart from what, for what?

Pope Francis, in his apostolic exhortation on the call to holiness in today’s world, Gaudete et Exsultate, provides a complete answer in a few short lines. He says: “Jesus explained with great simplicity what it means to be holy when he gave us the Beatitudes, … [which] are like a Christian’s identity card…. We have to do, each in our own way, what Jesus told us in the Sermon on the Mount…. The word “happy” or “blessed” thus becomes a synonym for “holy.” It expresses the fact that those faithful to God and his word, by their self-giving, gain true happiness” [my italics].

Pope Francis continues: “Although Jesus’ words [in the Beatitudes] may strike us as poetic, they clearly run counter to the way things are usually done in our world. Even if we find Jesus’ message attractive, the world pushes us towards another way of living. The Beatitudes are in no way trite or undemanding, quite the opposite. We can only practise them if the Holy Spirit fills us with his power and frees us from our weakness, our selfishness, our complacency and our pride.”

So, to be holy, we must be set apart from “the way things are usually done in our world.” For what? To “gain true happiness” through our faithfulness to “God and his word.” Contrary to the images that popped into my mind, holy people should never be languid and anguished. According to the Beatitudes, they should be “happy” and “blessed”! 

Praise the Lord! Let us be holy, for the Lord our God is holy!




Donna Davis

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