Reflection: What We Talk About When We Talk About Holiness

Recently, I was visiting a parishioner in the hospital and he made a great point: sometimes, those of us who have been raised in the Church use certain words and we take them for granted without pausing to consider what they truly mean. Words like Glory, fellowship, and salvation are so pervasively used that we often lose sight of their meaning. I was reminded of this phenomenon this week at St. John’s College where we recently launched a book discussion group with some of our St. Paul’s students. We were discussing C.S. Lewis’ masterful book The Great Divorce and, in the course of the conversation, I threw out the term “grace.” Someone asked me to define that term and I balked, realizing that it denotes a much more complex idea than I was prepared to explain in the moment.

A common term we use a lot, and the one I want to focus on today, is holiness. We talk about God as holy and our desire to acquire holiness. But what does it mean to be holy?

Kadesh. Hagios. These are the Hebrew and Greek words most commonly used in the Bible for “holy.” In Latin, the term is sanctus from which we get our word sanctuary, a holy place set apart for the worship of God. Holiness refers to set apartness. When it comes to morality, this carries a sense of purity but it refers to more than that. Usually, when people are set apart, they are set apart for something.

After passing through the Red Sea, Moses and Israel sing, “Who is like unto thee, O Lord, among the gods? Who is like thee, glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders?” In I Samuel 2:2, Hannah, the mother of Samuel, echoes her forefathers’ sentiments by praying, “There is none holy as the Lord: For there is none beside thee: Neither is there any rock like our God.” It’s God’s holiness that causes him to be worshipped in heaven in Isaiah 6:3: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts: The whole earth is full of his glory.” God is holy because no one else is like him. As our Creator, God is completely and utterly distinct from his creation. While us creatures can be good or bad, God is perfect; while we waiver between virtue and vice, he is constant. It’s not that God acts a certain way and proves that he’s holy; the opposite is true: God is holy and so his actions are holy.

In the Old Testament, one of the implications of God’s holiness is that the people of Israel, his Chosen People, were called to be holy. Because God is holy and Israel was to represent God to the world, they were called to be holy too. In Leviticus 19:2, God instructs Israel, “Ye shall be holy: for I the Lord your God am holy.” Israel’s holiness was always derivative of God’s holiness; they could become holy by participating in God’s life. How were they to do this? The answer is the Law of Moses which teaches us how to live in ways that are pleasing to God. Israel’s Law set them apart from their neighbors. They had to eat differently, live differently, and worship differently than the nations around them.

The New Testament calls the Church to an analogous holiness. In fact, the kind of holiness Christians are called to is more radical because it’s from the inside out. One of the problems with law in general is that it is behavior management. One can abide by the letter of the law and still miss the real purpose. The Christian law is interior. It’s not enough to not commit adultery because you shouldn’t even lust. It’s not enough to not murder because you shouldn’t even get angry at someone in your thought. This is a totalizing holiness that cuts to the heart of the person. That’s why St. Paul summarizes Christian ethics with a singular word: love. “He that loveth another hath fulfilled the law” (Rom 13:8). In a world characterized by violence and hatred, the love God shows us, and that we can then extend to others, sets us apart.

But what is holiness for? The answer has two parts that connect like a graph with vertical and horizontal axes. The first and primary reason for our holiness is the vertical dimension. It’s through holiness we worship God. “Present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service” (Rom 12:1). In the Old Testament, an animal might be sacrificed to God as a picture of the coming redemption through Jesus Christ. Now that redemption is here, we respond not by killing an animal but by living into the fact that we have been set apart by God. We understand that we were bought at a great price (I Cor 6:20) and so we offer God ourselves in an attempt at reciprocity. As we pray during the Holy Communion liturgy, “although we are unworthy, through our manifold sins, to offer unto thee any sacrifice; yet we beseech thee to accept this our bounden duty and service” (BCP 81). For Christians, being holy means offering God every part of who we are, not holding anything back, but giving him our whole selves.

The horizontal axis of holiness is also indispensable. “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it; Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” Humans are created in God’s image; if we don’t love others, we can’t love God and vice-versa. Holiness is not an opportunity to look down on others, like in the instance of the Pharisee who uses his perceived holiness to look down on the poor publican. Rather, our holiness should cause us to reach out towards others, to love them better, as a way of evangelism. This was the case for Israel in the Old Testament. Psalm 67 draws out the universal intention of God. He chose Israel so “That thy way may be known upon earth, Thy saving health among all nations. Let the people praise thee, O God; Let all the people praise thee” (vv. 2–3). One of my favorite novels is The Samurai by Shusaku Endo. Without giving too much away, one of the characters performs an act that he knows will bring him martyrdom in Japan. When a puzzled government official interrogates this character as to why he would do something that he knows would bring him death, he responds by saying “Your question itself is the answer. You have said that what I did was ridiculous. I understand that. But why did I knowingly perform such a ridiculous act? Why did I deliberately do something that seems so lunatic? Why did I come to Japan knowing I would die? Think about that that sometime. If I can die and leave you and Japan to deal with that question, my life in this world will have had meaning.” This character makes a peculiar decision for the purpose of Japan’s salvation. The question of Israel’s holiness, and now, the Church’s holiness should be a “splinter in the mind” that causes people to wonder why we act the way we do. That wonder should give way to awe as they grasp the transformative mystery of God’s love and power.

If it’s true that holiness has a two-pronged goal of worship God and bringing the nations to him, the remaining question is how do we become holy. In one sense, at Baptism, you are made holy because Baptism seals us with the Holy Spirit and marks us as Christ’s own forever. Still, holiness is an area in which we can grow as we participate in God’s life. This begins with the grace he gives us at Holy Communion: just like he fed the people of Israel with manna from heaven as they wandered toward the Promise Land so he feeds us with himself as we approach our heavenly destiny. But this is the beginning, not the end. The story that’s played out every Mass should be transposed into our own lives. This happens when we recognize not only who we are but whose we are.