Fr. Eduardo Emilio Aguero, SCJ
Speak to the whole community of Israelites and say: “Be holy, for I, Yahweh your God, am holy“. (Lev 19:2)
I once asked a young girl: “Do you want to be holy?” She said emphatically: “No way!” I also told an altar boy: “You are called to be holy.” He jokingly replied: “No, Father, that’s not for me”. And I was saddened to realize that some young people who belong to our communities don’t even know what it means to be holy.
I wonder what their understanding of the concept of holiness is? Maybe we are presenting to them some stereotypes of holy people they are not able to connect with. I believe we sometimes stick to a very individualistic model of sainthood – saints are the ones who perform miracles, bilocate, levitate and after their conversion never make any mistakes…. Many “lives of saints” repeat the same features for saints that lived many years and even centuries apart from each other. That is a kind of literary genre many people are not able to understand today.
Holiness is about belonging to God. It is about being His people and living in a love-bound communion.
Last Sunday I had an experience of holiness. Our Portuguese-speaking community of Our Lady of Carmel parish in Taipa is preparing for the World Youth Day in Portugal. We want to send our young ones to participate in that activity because we believe that is a great opportunity for them to grow in faith and holiness. For that purpose, the families of the youth organized a coffee booth with cakes, pies and biscuits to collect some funds to help pay the travel expenses.
It was so beautiful to see them sharing some time together in the park next to our church after our Mass! After an hour, the kids, catechists and missionary youth came from the Sunday school and stayed there for another hour. They finished off all the cakes!
Our Portuguese-speaking community is a multicultural group of families coming not only from Portugal and Brazil, but also from Guinea Bissau, Mozambique, Venezuela, Colombia, Spain, Cabo Verde and, of course, our Macanese Portuguese-speaking folks.
What surprises me most is that this living community is attracting other people who are not yet Catholic to our Mass. Some non-Catholic couples bring their children to our Sunday school or, as we called it, Infância Missionária.
After receiving the sacrament of Confirmation, our missionary youth serve as guides or catechists for our children. And the kids love them! I could witness how our community grew from the true source of Christian life, the Eucharist: choir members, acolytes, ministers of the Eucharist, lectors, catechists, missionary youth, children and families, all come together to celebrate every Sunday.
In today’s first reading from the Book of Leviticus, God is addressing the “community of the children of Israel” and He tells them to be holy just as He is holy.
The same happens with the Gospel. Jesus tells His disciples: “Be perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect” (Mt 5:48), echoing what God had taught us in Leviticus 19:2. Israel, and later the Church, are called to enter into communion with the only One who is holy and the source of all holiness, the Triune God. His holiness is spelled out in Psalm 103: “The Lord is kind and merciful.”
God sanctifies us by allowing us to enter into His sacred space, which we should do with awe and reverence like Moses approaching the burning bush (Ex 3:5). He makes us His own – we are His people. We were created in His image: God is love, God is the communion of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Jesus came to gather the lost sheep of Israel (Lk 13:34), and based on that foundation He built His Church. Peter trembled in fear when he experienced Christ’s holiness and asked Him to go away from him because he was a sinner. Jesus told him and his companions that He would make them “fishers of men” (Lk 5:10), that is missionary-disciples of Jesus who would found new Christian-Eucharistic communities.
Paul writes to the Corinthians, who were a small but very conflict-ridden community. He questions them sternly: “Do you not know that you are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?” Then He refers to some particular persons, whom we don’t know: “If anyone destroys the Temple…” It seems some persons were destroying the community due to jealousy, slander, power struggle, etc. And then He adds: “Let no one deceive himself.” Boasting of one’s knowledge, status, wisdom and abilities also leads to vanity and emptiness.
Our wisdom should be that of the little ones of God, the poor of spirit, who belong totally to Him: “All belongs to you, and you to Christ, and Christ to God.” That’s true wisdom, the wisdom of the Cross, the love of Christ, which we, the Church of Jesus, have to offer to the world.
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