From: Leviticus 19:1-2, 11-18
Moral and Religious Duties
[11] “You shall not steal, nor deal falsely, nor lie to one another. [12] And you
shall not swear by my name falsely, and so profane the name of your God: I am
the LORD.
[13] “You shall not oppress your neighbor or rob him. The wages of a hired ser-
vant shall not remain with you all night until the morning. [14] You shall not curse
the deaf or put a stumbling block before the blind, but you shall fear your God: I
am the LORD.
[15] “You shall do no injustice in judgment; you shall not be partial to the poor or
defer to the great, but in righteousness shall you judge your neighbour. [16] You
shall not go up and down as a slanderer among your people, and you shall not
stand forth against your neighbour: I am the LORD.
[17] “You shall not hate your brother in your heart, but you shall reason with your
neighbor, lest you bear sin because of him. [18] You shall not take vengeance or
bear any grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your
neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD.
*********************************************************************************************
Commentary:
19:1-37. The holiness asked of the Israelites is much more than merely ritual ho-
liness. As in 20:26, the exhortation made to them is based on the highest possi-
ble reason—the fact that the Lord is holy. The injunction to honor parents, as also
the obligation to keep the sabbath and the prohibition on idolatry, are command-
ments of the Decalogue already spelt out in Exodus 20:3-4, 12; 21:15, 17. The
rules about peace offerings were covered in Leviticus 7:11-15, and the rules to
protect the weaker members of society are repeated on a number of occasions
(cf. 23:22; Deut 24:19.22).
Verse 2 (”You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy”: cf. also 20:26) and
v. 18 (”you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord” :cf. also 19:33-34)
sum up the entire ethic of Leviticus and indeed of the whole Law of God. Jesus
himself says this, as reported in Matthew 22:34-40 (parallel texts in Mk 12:28-31
and Luke 10:25-28): “When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Saddu-
cees, they came together. And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to
test him. ‘Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?’ And he said to
him, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul,
and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second
is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments
depend all the law and the prophets’ “ (Mt 22:34-40).
19:1-8. Our Lord refers to the criteria about perjury in his Sermon on the Mount,
in which he rejects the prevalent abuse of swearing by holy things such as hea-
ven, earth or the holy city for no good reason (cf. Mt 5:33-37). Jesus’ teaching on
this point is that all one need do is simply tell the truth, without any oath to back
up one’s words. St James reminds Christians of that same teaching (cf. Jas 5:
12). The blind and the deaf (v. 14) are to be respected out of fear of the Lord: any
harm done them he regards as done to himself. Fraternal correction is a practice
which Jesus will put on a higher plane (cf. Mt 18:15f). He does the same for love
of neighbor. For one thing, one’s neighbor is not just members of the Jewish peo-
ple or sojourners in Judea: for Christ everyone we meet is our neighbor, irrespec-
tive of his religion or race. And it is not just a matter of loving others as oneself,
but of loving them as Christ loved us (cf. Jn 15:12).
19:13. The social teaching of the Church, which is part of moral theology and is
based on Revelation and on reason enlightened by faith, is summed up on the
subject of the just wage by the Catechism of the Catholic Church: “A just wage
is the legitimate fruit of work. To refuse or withhold it can be a grave injustice (cf
Lev 19:13; Deut 24:14-15; Jas 5:4), In determining fair pay both the needs and
the contributions of each person must be taken into account. ‘Remuneration for
work should guarantee man the opportunity to provide a dignified livelihood for
himself and his family on the material, social, cultural and spiritual level, taking
into account the role and the productivity of each, the state of the business, and
the common good’ (”Gaudium Et Spes”, 67). Agreement between the parties is
not sufficient to justify morally the amount to be received in wages” (no. 2434).
19:15. “Justice is the moral virtue that consists in the constant and firm will to
give their due to God and neighbor. Justice toward God is called the ‘virtue of
religion’. Justice toward men disposes one to respect the rights of each and to
establish in human relationships the harmony that promotes equity with regard
to persons and to the common good. The just man, often mentioned in the Sac-
red Scriptures, is distinguished by habitual right thinking and the uprightness of
his conduct toward his neighbor. ‘You shall not be partial to the poor or defer to
the great, but in righteousness shall you judge your neighbor’ (Lev 19:15)”
(Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1807).
*********************************************************************************************
Source: “The Navarre Bible: Text and Commentaries”. Biblical text from the
Revised Standard Version and New Vulgate. Commentaries by members of
the Faculty of Theology, University of Navarre, Spain.
Published by Four Courts Press, Kill Lane, Blackrock, Co. Dublin, Ireland, and
by Scepter Publishers in the United States.
From: Matthew 25:31-46
The Last Judgment
*********************************************************************************************
Commentary:
31-46. The three parables (Matthew 24:42-51; 25:1-13; and 25:14-30) are comple-
ted by the announcement of a rigorous last judgment, a last act in a drama, in
which all matters of justice are resolved. Christian tradition calls it the Last Judg-
ment, to distinguish it from the “Particular Judgment” which everyone undergoes
immediately after death. The sentence pronounced at the end of time will simply
be a public, formal confirmation of that already passed on the good and the evil,
the elect and the reprobate.
31-33. In the Prophets and in the Book of Revelation the Messiah is depicted on
a throne, like a judge. This is how Jesus will come at the end of the world, to
judge the living and the dead.
The Last Judgment is a truth spelled out in the very earliest credal statements
of the Church and dogma of faith solemnly defined by Benedict XII in the Consti-
tution “Benedictus Deus” (29 January 1336).
35-46. All the various things listed in this passage (giving people food and drink,
clothing them, visiting them) become works of Christian charity when the person
doing them sees Christ in these “least” of His brethren.
Here we can see the seriousness of sins of omission. Failure to do something
which one should do means leaving Christ unattended.
“We must learn to recognize Christ when He comes out to meet us in our bro-
thers, the people around us. No human life is ever isolated. It is bound up with
other lives. No man or woman is a single verse; we all make up one divine poem
which God writes with the cooperation of our freedom” St. J. Escriva, “Christ Is
Passing By”, 111).
We will be judged on the degree and quality of our love (cf. St. John of the Cross,
“Spiritual Sentences and Maxims”, 57). Our Lord will ask us to account not only
for the evil we have done but also for the good we have omitted. We can see that
sins of omission are a very serious matter and that the basis of love of neighbor
is Christ’s presence in the least of our brothers and sisters.
St. Teresa of Avila writes: “Here the Lord asks only two things of us: love for His
Majesty and love of our neighbor. It is for these two virtues that we must strive,
and if we attain them perfectly we are doing His will [...]. The surest sign that
we are keeping these two commandments is, I think, that we should really be
loving our neighbor; for we cannot be sure if we are loving God, although we may
have good reasons for believing that we are, but we can know quite well if we
are loving our neighbor. And be certain that, the farther advanced you find you
are in this, the greater the love you will have for God; for so dearly does His Ma-
jesty love us that He will reward our love for our neighbor by increasing the love
which we bear to Himself, and that in a thousand ways: this I cannot doubt” (”In-
terior Castle”, V, 3).
This parable clearly shows that Christianity cannot be reduced to a kind of agen-
cy for “doing good”. Service of our neighbor acquires supernatural value when it
is done out of love for Christ, when we see Christ in the person in need. This is
why St. Paul asserts that “if I give away all I have...but have not love, I gain no-
thing” (1 Corinthians 13:3). Any interpretation of Jesus’ teaching on the Last
Judgment would be wide of the mark if it gave it a materialistic meaning or con-
fused mere philanthropy with genuine Christian charity.
40-45. In describing the exigencies of Christian charity which gives meaning to
“social aid”, the Second Vatican Council says: “Wishing to come to topics that
are practical and of some urgency, the Council lays stress on respect for the
human person: everyone should look upon his neighbor (without any exception)
as another self, bearing in mind, above all, his life and the means necessary for
living it in a dignified way, ‘lest he follow the example of the rich man who ignored
Lazarus, the poor man’ (cf. Luke 16:18-31).
“Today there is an inescapable duty to make ourselves the neighbor of every
man, no matter who he is, and if we meet him, to come to his aid in a positive
way, whether he is an aged person abandoned by all, a foreign worker despised
without reason, a refugee, an illegitimate child wrongly suffering for a sin he did
not commit, or a starving human being who awakens our conscience by calling
to mind the words of Christ: ‘As you did it to one of the least of these My breth-
ren, you did it to Me.’” (”Gaudium Et Spes,” 27).
46. The eternal punishment of the reprobate and the eternal reward of the elect
are a dogma of faith solemnly defined by the Magisterium of the Church in the
Fourth Lateran Council (1215): “He [Christ] will come at the end of the world; He
will judge the living and the dead; and He will reward all, both the lost and the e-
lect, according to their works. And all these will rise with their own bodies which
they now have so that they may receive according to their works, whether good
or bad; the wicked, a perpetual punishment with the devil; the good, eternal glory
with Christ.”
*********************************************************************************************
Source: “The Navarre Bible: Text and Commentaries”. Biblical text from the
Revised Standard Version and New Vulgate. Commentaries by members of
the Faculty of Theology, University of Navarre, Spain.
Published by Four Courts Press, Kill Lane, Blackrock, Co. Dublin, Ireland, and
by Scepter Publishers in the United States.