Tell the children of Israel to be holy for I, the Lord, am holy. The 19 ^th chapter of the Book of Leviticus from which today’s first reading comes is entitled, " Moral and religious obligations." The contents of this chapter appear to be an expanded version of the Ten Commandments. From the heading, it is clear that religion and morality cannot be separated. The Ten Commandments and other regulations that over time came to be attached to it are both religious and moral norms. They serve to check and assess our relationship with God and one another. Moreover, God demands that the words of his commandments be faithfully observed as a participation in God’s holiness. The Lord calls us to be holy because the Lord is holy. The question that we must answer is this: in what does this holiness demanded of us consist?
You shall not steal. You shall not lie or speak falsely to one another. You shall not defraud or rob your neighbor. You shall not bear hatred for your brother in your heart. The list is endless. But for our benefit, this list has been shortened to a single commandment: love of the neighbor (cf. John 13:34). Holiness, then, consists in loving. Or rather, love is the other name for holiness. God is holy because God is love (cf. I John 4:8). Consequently, God's demand that we be holy as God is holy means that we must love because God is love. As the Gospel reading reminds us, we remain faithful to God’s command to love when we reach out to those in our midst who are less fortunate. 
If the Lenten season, then, is given to us so that we can work on our holiness, this means that Lent is a time for working on how we love. All the Lenten regulations that we observe should have love as its sole goal and end. At the end of the Lenten season, I should be able to evaluate myself on how much love I have shown to those around me.