“You shall be holy; for I the Lord your God am holy.” These are the first words of the reading from Leviticus. What was holiness for a Jew? The word that has been translated into English as holy in Hebrew is kadosh, and it means sacred, in the sense of separate. Kadosh, holy, is therefore something or someone who has separated himself from everything or everyone, for good and also for evil (even a magician could be kadosh but we know that magic was and is a serious sin). Holy, in the time of Jesus, were the sacred things used in the temple, reserved for worshipping God. It was considered holy people those who scrupulously observed the Law, sometimes in a maniacal way, as we understand from the polemics of Jesus with the Pharisees reported in the Gospels.

We can say for sure that Jesus overcame this vision when he said: “Be merciful as your Father is merciful” (Lk 6:36) or when he said “This is my commandment: love one another as I love you.”. (Jn 15:12) Jesus did not ask for obedience and observance but for similarity to him. Christian holiness requires no personal effort to obtain merit or rewards. Christian holiness is the full acceptance of God’s love which is free, without conditions. God loves you even if you are the greatest sinner. There are no laws to observe for God to deserve his attention; there are no ascetic and heroic efforts to make to please God. There is only his proposal. In Jesus and with Jesus he chose to be “among” us, to be one of us, to make us become like him.

This reflection on holiness helps us to better understand today’s Gospel. The first reading ends with the sentence: “You shall love your neighbor as your self”. We recall that three evangelists quote this sentence, associated with the words of the Shema (Deuteronomy). “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your being, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself” (Lk 10:27). Jesus was replying to a scholar of the law who asked him what the greatest commandment was. Jesus united love for God with love for neighbor. In the Gospel of Luke this sentence is explained by Jesus with the parable of the Samaritan.

The famous parable of the final judgment we read is a majestic description of the final verdict on human history. At the end of the story, two groups emerge: those who will receive God’s blessing and those who have to leave empty-handed. What is the difference between the two groups? It is neither the religion they professed, nor the color of their skin, nor their wealth nor their political affiliation. The former assisted those who were suffering and who needed help. They used compassion (even small things like giving a glass of fresh water). The others have chosen to be indifferent and are condemned to indifference.

Jesus is not speaking of love, justice, solidarity but of very concrete things, those we learned in catechism and which we call works of mercy.

1. To feed the hungry
2. To give water to the thirsty
3. To clothe the naked
4. To shelter the homeless
5. To visit the sick
6. To visit the imprisoned, or ransom the captive
7. To bury the dead

Jesus speaks of eating, of clothes, of having a drink, of a roof to shelter and identifies himself with the poor, the hungry, the thirsty. “As you did it to one of the least of this my brethern, you did it to me”.

At the end of our life we ​​will be asked what we have done concretely in front of the people who needed our help. Even today Jesus cries out to all humanity: take care of those who suffer, take care of the little ones. No religion will ever be blessed by God if it does not generate compassion for the least. A Christian cannot remain indifferent, neutral, detached in the face of poverty and injustices. He will have to account for it.

Then I leave you a suggestion for when you go to confession. There are four types of sins: thoughts, words, what I have done and what I failed to do. We particularly remember the last one, the sin of omission. We could have done something and we didn’t. It is a shame! We missed an opportunity to do good. Someone in Italy confessed and said: “Father, I don’t do anything wrong, I don’t kill, I don’t steal, I don’t…” And I answered him: “And what good are you doing?”. They usually couldn’t answer.

One of the practices that Lent suggests to us is almsgiving. In this word almsgiving we put all that is attention to our neighbor. A life lived by doing one’s own business and not caring about others is certainly not a life according to the Gospel but above all it is a tasteless and meaningless life even on a human level. God will ask us to account for the talents he has given us: so let us try to make them bear fruit by putting them at the service of others. In this favorable time which is Lent, in which it is assumed that we dedicate a little more time to God, let us ask him insistently for the grace of conversion: may our selfishness be defeated, may our generosity and positive qualities emerge, may the time to devote and the energies to be lavished in the service of the least of our brothers increase. Whatever we can do, we will have done it to Christ.