FRIENDS and SERVANTS of the WORD
First Monday of Lent, February19, 2018
WORD of the DAY
You shall not hate any of your kindred in your heart. Reprove your neighbor openly so that you do not incur sin because of that person. Take no revenge and cherish no grudge against your own people. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. I am the LORD. (Leviticus19: 17-18)
How shall I live this Word?
Leviticus is a Book of the Bible and belongs to the Old Testament. The name LEVITICUS, expresses that it has been written especially for the Levites who formed the priestly class of the people of Israel. It was a class entirely occupied with teaching how to live the Law of God in all its details of interior attitudes and of behaviors.
It is lovely to grasp here a precise will of God regarding the CARE of what is in the full light of truth outside of the ‘fetid swamp’ which is worrying about ‘appearing’ like good people rather than truly being so.
It is this absolute opposition between the truth of being and the lie of appearing that Jesus Himself will denounce with the strongest and harshest words of the whole Gospel. If you are in authority or even if you hold the affection or consent of aloved one, a reproof can seem hard and unseemly. Yet life often requires it.
Lord, grant me the light of the Holy Spirit so that I will not fear to reprove someone when it is for their good. However, grant that I may do so without harshness, like one who proffers medicine in order to heal, and never to vent my own irritations or for other reasons.
The Message of Anselm d’Aosta, Theologian
I adjure you Lord, grant that I may see your light (...) teach me to look for you and show yourself when I look for you. May I seek you with my desire and desire you while I seek you.
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Institute of Daughters of Mary Help of Christians, Via dell’Ateneo Salesiano 81, 00139 Rome, Italy
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Comment by Sr. Maria Pia Giudici, FMA