Memory of the Poor
Reading of the Word of God
Praise to you, o Lord, King of eternal glory
This is the Gospel of the poor,
liberation for the imprisoned,
sight for the blind,
freedom for the oppressed.
Praise to you, o Lord, King of eternal glory
Leviticus 19,1-2.11-18
Yahweh spoke to Moses and said: 'Speak to the whole community of Israelites and say: "Be holy, for I, Yahweh your God, am holy. "You will not steal, nor deal deceitfully or fraudulently with your fellow-citizen. You will not swear by my name with intent to deceive and thus profane the name of your God. I am Yahweh. You will not exploit or rob your fellow. You will not keep back the labourer's wage until next morning. You will not curse the dumb or put an obstacle in the way of the blind, but will fear your God. I am Yahweh. "You will not be unjust in administering justice. You will neither be partial to the poor nor overawed by the great, but will administer justice to your fellow-citizen justly. You will not go about slandering your own family, nor will you put your neighbour's life in jeopardy. I am Yahweh. You will not harbour hatred for your brother. You will reprove your fellow-countryman firmly and thus avoid burdening yourself with a sin. You will not exact vengeance on, or bear any sort of grudge against, the members of your race, but will love your neighbour as yourself. I am Yahweh.
Praise to you, o Lord, King of eternal glory
The Son of Man came to serve,
whoever wants to be great
should become servant of all.
Praise to you, o Lord, King of eternal glory
This passage of Leviticus is bookended by two commands that cap a sort of Decalogue: "Be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy," and "Love your neighbour as yourself." God and neighbour are connected by the Word of God, in the double commandment of love for God and neighbours. Holiness is the very condition of God. That is, he is other, separate from us, transcendent, but not enclosed inside his own existence, rather God asks us to participate in his very life. "Be holy," he tells us, that is: "Do not be afraid to take part in my very way of being, in my perfection." Love for our neighbour fulfils the exhortation to holiness. Within these two invitations, the author reports some commandments that trace the way to become holy: do not oppress your neighbour nor take their goods, pay the worker, do not curse the deaf, do not hinder the blind, judge with justice in court, do not slander and do not contribute to the death of another person (this refers, perhaps, to the possibility of condemning someone with false testimony, as happened for example to Naboth in 1 Kings 21), do not harbour hate, do not take revenge, do not harbour rancour. The commandments that the book of Leviticus reports still speak to today's world. They help us to reflect on those concrete behaviours that prevent us from following the way of holiness. The Lord by asking us to love our neighbour as ourselves, shows that he does not ask an impossible measure and makes a very effective comparison: if we loved others as we love ourselves, our lives would be very different and the world way more peaceful.