Dear Friends

Jesus instruction on the reinterpretation of the Law, begun last Sunday, continues today.

Once again we realise that true wisdom, which comes to us through the Holy Spirit, will enrich us with insight into life in ways we never thought possible before. We are quite familiar with the command to love because we have read it so often in the Gospels.

Here in Leviticus we are asked to understand this love from a new perspective. Firstly we are asked to be holy as God is holy. It is from this concept of divine holiness that the contrast of love and hate must be understood.

The life of holiness we are asked to embrace, is a life lived in community, patterned on the holiness of God. Our likeness to God is determined by the way we relate to others. This is the standard that Jesus puts before us when he commands us to “be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect”. It takes a life time of living to come anywhere near the complete, fulfilled and undivided potential of our growth in holiness, but it remains our goal!