The command in the first reading is simple and unsettling:

“You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.”

Holiness is not presented as a talent or a temperament. It is a calling.

God does not say: Try to be better than others.
He says: Be like me. And then the Law becomes very concrete.

“You shall not steal.”
“You shall not deal falsely.”
“You shall not oppress your neighbour.”
“You shall not hate your brother in your heart.”
“You shall love your neighbour as yourself.”

Holiness is not a mystical escape.
It is moral truth lived daily.

God does not separate worship from conduct.
The God who says, “I am holy,”
also says, “Do not lie. Do not exploit. Do not take revenge.”

To belong to God is to live differently.

And the centre of it all is this line: “You shall love your neighbour as yourself.”

It forbids hatred.
It forbids grudges.
It forbids indifference.

It demands that what we want for ourselves we do not deny to others.

This prepares us for the Gospel.

Jesus does not speak in images of seed or harvest. He speaks of judgment.

“When the Son of Man comes in his glory…
he will separate people one from another
as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.”

This is not a threat. It is a revelation.

It tells us that history is going somewhere.
That human choices matter. That love is not invisible to God.

The judgment Jesus describes is not based on reputation.
Not on religious language. Not on feelings. It is based on deeds.

“I was hungry and you gave me food.”
“I was thirsty and you gave me drink.”
“I was a stranger and you welcomed me.”
“I was naked and you clothed me.”
“I was sick and you visited me.”
“I was in prison and you came to me.”

These are not heroic acts. They are ordinary ones.

They require attention.
They require time.
They require inconvenience.

And they reveal something more.

Jesus identifies himself with the needy.

“As you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.”

This is the heart of the Gospel.

Holiness is not measured by how high we climb.
It is measured by how low we are willing to go.

The neighbour is not an interruption.
The neighbour is the place where God waits.

And the tragedy Jesus describes is not cruelty. It is blindness.

“Lord, when did we see you hungry…?”

They did not refuse Christ. They failed to recognise him.

They did not choose evil. They chose comfort.

They did not hate the poor. They ignored them.

And that is enough to miss the kingdom.

This is where St Polycarp belongs.

Polycarp was a bishop in the early Church.
A disciple of the apostle John.
A man formed directly by the Gospel.

When persecution came, he was arrested and told to deny Christ.

He was old. He could have saved himself.

Instead, he said: “Eighty-six years I have served Him,
and He has done me no wrong.
How can I blaspheme my King and Saviour?”

He did not die because he enjoyed suffering.
He died because he would not separate faith from truth.

The Christ he served was the Christ of the poor, the Christ of the cross,
the Christ who would judge the nations.

Polycarp understood what Leviticus commanded and what Matthew revealed.

Holiness is not a private feeling. It is public loyalty.

To God. And to neighbour. And the measure is love in action.

Not talk.
Not theory.
Not intention.

Action.

The Gospel today is not given to frighten us. It is given to focus us.

It tells us where Christ will be found when the final accounting comes.

Not in success.
Not in admiration.
Not in comfort.

But in the hungry.
The sick.
The forgotten.
The imprisoned.

And it tells us that to serve them is not to leave God behind.

It is to meet Him.

“You shall be holy, for I am holy.”

God’s holiness
is not distant.

It kneels to wash feet.
It feeds the hungry.
It suffers the cross.

And the saints
do not invent another path.

They walk this one.

So today’s question is not complicated.

Where is Christ waiting for us
to recognise Him?

In whose need
is He hidden?

The Law says:
Love your neighbour as yourself.

The Gospel says:
Your neighbour is Me.

And St Polycarp shows us
that to belong to Christ
is to belong to this truth
even unto death.

Holiness is not elsewhere.

It is here.

In what we do
with the least.