First Monday of Lent
23 February 2026
Be holy
The first reading opens with a command that sounds almost overwhelming in its simplicity
and impossible in its application:
“Be holy,
for I, the Lord your God, am holy.”
That word holy does not mean distant, mystical, or removed from daily life.
In Leviticus, holiness is concrete.
It is moral.
It is relational.
It shows up in how people treat one another.
Listen carefully to what follows that command.
Do not steal.
Do not lie.
Do not defraud your neighbor.
Do not hate your brother in your heart.
Do not seek revenge.
Do not bear a grudge.
And then the line that gathers them all together:
“You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
In other words,
holiness is not primarily about ritual precision.
It is about whether God’s character has actually taken root in the way we live.
God is holy
not because He withdraws from others,
but because He is faithful, just, merciful, and truthful.
To be holy, then, is to allow our lives to be shaped by those same qualities.
This idea is what reframes Lent entirely.
Lent is not about becoming someone new for forty days.
It is about revealing who we already are.
That becomes unmistakably clear in the Gospel.
Jesus describes the final judgment,
and what is striking is not what is mentioned
—but what is not.
There is no mention of fasting.
No mention of prayer schedules.
No mention of religious performance.
Instead, everything turns on ordinary acts of mercy:
feeding the hungry,
welcoming the stranger,
clothing the naked,
visiting the sick,
remaining present to the imprisoned.
These are not extraordinary moments.
They are daily opportunities.
And the surprise in the Gospel is that both groups
—the righteous and the condemned—
are unaware.
“When did we see you…?”
Which tells us something crucial:
this judgment is not about isolated decisions.
It is about what had become habitual.
The sheep did not pause to decide whether to love;
they simply did.
The goats did not actively reject Christ;
they failed to notice Him.
Lent, then, is not a season where we try harder so that God will be pleased.
It is a season where God allows us to see clearly what already directs our attention, our priorities, and our compassion.
Leviticus tells us what holiness looks like from the ground up.
Matthew tells us where that way of life ultimately leads.
And together they reveal this quiet truth:
the final judgment does not test what we intended,
but what we practiced.
That is why the Church gives us Lent
—not as a threat,
but as mercy.
Because habits can be reformed.
Blindness can be healed.
Hearts can be trained to recognize Christ where He actually chooses to appear.
Not only in the Eucharist,
but in the neighbor,
the inconvenience,
the need we would rather pass by.
So today,
let us ask ourselves:
What does my daily life already reveal about what—or whom—I truly recognize?
And the good news is this:
God does not expose us in order to condemn us.
He exposes us so that we may finally become what He has always called us to be.
“Be holy,” He says.
Not someday.
Not abstractly.
But here—
in truth,
in mercy,
and in love.