Monday of Week 1 of Lent – Gospel

Commentary on Matthew 25:31-46

Both of today’s readings deal with the way we ought to behave towards each other. The First Reading tells us the kinds of things we ought not to do, while the Gospel emphasises more what we should be doing.

The Gospel describes the great scene of the Last Judgment when all will face their Lord Jesus. We will be divided into sheep and goats—i.e. those who are with Jesus and those who are not. The criteria on which we will be judged are interesting. There is nothing about the Ten Commandments (normally the matter of our confessions). Nor is there anything about the behaviors mentioned in the First Reading, which more or less reflect the contents of the Ten Commandments. There is nothing about what we normally call ‘religious obligations’ (e.g. being ‘at Mass’ on Sundays and holydays).

The test will be very simple. Did we love all our brothers and sisters or not? There is some discussion as to the identity of these ‘brothers and sisters’. Does it refer to all who are hungry, thirsty, in need of clothes, in need of medical care or in jail—or to a particular group? The passage may primarily be about Christians, and especially Christian missionaries whose preaching brought them suffering and persecution. These missionaries were more likely, too, to end up in prison. To reject and abuse these people and their message is tantamount to rejecting Jesus himself.

However, we have traditionally extended the passage to include all who suffer in any way because of our neglect, and we recognise Jesus as being present in these people in a special way.

And the things we are supposed to do are so simple: give food to Jesus hungry and drink to Jesus thirsty; to clothe Jesus naked; to visit Jesus sick and Jesus in jail. And naturally people will ask:

Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison and did not take care of you?

And the Judge will answer:

Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.

He says “to me”, not “for me”. Jesus identifies himself especially with the person in need. Every time we neglect to help a brother or sister in need, we neglect Jesus himself. Our worst sins, our most dangerous sins, will be our sins of omission. We can keep the Ten Commandments perfectly and still fail here.

The next time we examine our conscience, let us think about that. Whether we realise it or not, every time we spontaneously take care of a brother or sister in need, it is Jesus himself we are serving.

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Monday of Week 1 of Lent – First Reading

Commentary on Leviticus 19:1-2,11-18

The general theme of the Book of Leviticus is in today’s opening sentence:

You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.

Today’s reading comes from a section dealing with moral and religious regulations related to daily life, with obvious links to the Ten Commandments. Some of them sound somewhat strange today such as:

You shall not round off the hair on your temples or mar the edges of your beard. (Lev 19:27)

Presumably some of Israel’s ‘pagan’ neighbours were doing this.

In today’s reading the call is clear: the measure of our holiness is that of God himself. Obviously that is not something to be even remotely achieved in our lifetime; rather, it is an ideal to be constantly aimed at as we continually try to raise our sights. But are there are any measures by which we can measure our progress in something so abstract as holiness?

Very simply, today’s reading says that holiness consists in the way we treat (or do not treat) those around us. It is perhaps worth observing that everything here is expressed in the negative, the things we ought not to do towards our brothers and sisters:

• No stealing or fraud.
• No irreverent use of God’s name.
• No abuse of others through exploitation or robbery or by failing to pay just wages at the proper time.
• No abuse or neglect of the disabled: the blind and the deaf are mentioned.
• Avoiding all forms of prejudice and bias either towards the weak or the powerful.
• No passing of judgement on others beyond the bounds of justice and fairness.
• Never criticising out of hatred, but only out of a desire to help.
• No exacting vengeance and no holding grudges.

It is quite obvious that it is not enough just not to do these things, but rather positively to do the opposite in each case. And they are all finally summed up in one positive injunction:

…you shall love your neighbor as yourself…

In the context within Leviticus, it is clear that ‘neighbour’ means a fellow Jew, but Jesus—as well as Paul and James in their letters—would extend its meaning to embrace every single person.

Some of the stricter Pharisees interpreted ‘loving the neighbour’ as implying that one should ‘hate the enemy’. But others came closer to Jesus’ injunction that love for neighbour should even extend to those who would want to harm us. For instance, the medieval Spanish Rabbi Moses ben Nahman (also know as Nahmanides) said:

One should place no limitations upon the love for the neighbour, but instead a person should love to do an abundance of good for his fellow being as he does for himself.

It is clear from this and the later teaching of Jesus that ‘neighbour’ included every single person and not just those close to us by place, nationality, race, religion, class or gender—even those who would want to harm us. And, as today’s Gospel makes clear, our neighbour is particularly to be identified with any person who is in need of help of any kind.

Later, Jesus would push the command even further when he told us to love each other, not just as much as we love ourselves, but to the degree that he loved us—by ‘emptying’ himself and giving his life for every single one of us.

As I reflect on this passage during Lent, I may ask: Where do I stand in my relationships with my friends, my ‘enemies’ or the needy in my community?

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