Homily, 2-19-24; Monday of the 1st Week of Lent:
“Be holy, for I, the LORD, your God, am holy.” Through Moses, God tells the people that He expects them to be holy. They are to be sanctified by keeping the Commandments, by loving God and loving their neighbor. In the next chapter of Leviticus, God repeats the call to holiness. God says: “To me, therefore, you shall be holy; for I, the LORD, am holy, and I have set you apart from other peoples to be my own.” He has set them apart, He has separated them from the unholy.
And this ties in directly with our gospel passage. At the judgement the holy will be separated from the unholy—the sheep from the goats. The sheep are made holy by loving service to their neighbors. We become holy like God when we become sheep like Jesus, the Lamb of God. Jesus humbled Himself to share our humanity so that we can have a share in His divinity.
And Jesus tells us in another place in Matthew’s gospel: “So be perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect” (Mt 5:48). We are called to holy and called to be perfect—two of the requirements for entering Heaven—so we can share Christ’s divinity.
Our Lenten journey is a time to grow in holiness and perfection so that we can eliminate or reduce our time in Purgatory to be purged and perfected. And the call to almsgiving during Lent is a great way to be numbered among the sheep, to be aligned with Christ. We can feed the hungry by volunteering at soup kitchens or donating to food banks or Food for the Poor. We give water to the thirsty by making donation to organization providing wells in the poor countries. We can welcome strangers and newcomers that enter the doors of our church. We can clean out our closets and donate clothes to the Salvation Army. We can go out of our way to call or visit friends and loved ones who are ill in the hospital or homebound.
Lent is the time to practice becoming a sheep, becoming more like the Lamb of God. Don’t be a goat.