2nd Reading, 24th Sunday in Ordinary Time

From: James 2:14-18

Faith Without Good Works Is Dead
[14] What does it profit, my brethren, if a man says he has faith but has not works? Can this faith save him? [15] If a brother or sister is ill-clad and in lack of daily food, [16] and one of you says to them, "Go in peace, be warmed and filled," without giving them the things needed for the body, what does it profit? [17] So faith, by itself, if it has no works, is dead.

[18] But some one will say, "You have faith and I have works." Show me your faith apart from your works, and I by my works will show you my faith.
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Commentary:
14-26. This passage forms the core of the letter. The sapiential method (often used in the Old Testament) and pedagogical style of the passage help to engrave the message on the readers' minds: unless faith is accompanied by works, it is barren, dead. This basic message, with different variances, is stated up to five times (verses 14, 17, 18, 20, 26), in a cyclical, repetitive way.

The initial rhetorical question (verse 14) and the simple, vivid example of a person who is content with giving good advice to someone in urgent need of the bare essentials (verses 15-16), catch the disciples' attention and predispose them to accept the core message, which is couched in the form of a sapiential maxim (verse 17).

The narrative retains its conventional tone, with a series of questions; we are given three examples of faith: firstly (a negative example), the faith of demons, which is of no avail (verses 18-19); contrasting with this, the faith of Abraham, the model and father of believers (verses 20-23); and finally, the faith of a sinner whose actions won her salvation, Rabah, the prostitute (verses 24-25). The last sentence once again repeats the essential idea: "faith apart from works is dead" (verse 26).

14. This teaching is perfectly in line with that of the Master: "Not every one who says to Me, 'Lord, Lord', shall enter the Kingdom of Heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in Heaven" (Matthew &;21).

A faith without deeds cannot obtain salvation: "Even though incorporated into the Church, one who does not however persevere in charity is not saved. He remains indeed in the bosom of the Church, but 'in body' not 'in heart'. All children of the Church should nevertheless remember that their exalted condition results not from their own merits but from the grace of Christ. If they fail to respond in thought, word, and deed to that grace, not only shall they not be saved, but they shall be the more severely judged" (Vatican II, "Lumen Gentium", 14).

In the Christian life, therefore, there needs to be complete consistency between the faith we profess and the deeds we do. "Unity of life", one of the key features of the spirituality of Opus Dei, tries to counter the danger of people leading a double life, "on the one hand, an inner life, a life related to God; and on the other, as something separate and distinct, their professional, social and family lives, made up of small earthly realities [...]. There is only one life, made of flesh and spirit. And it is that life which has to become, in both body and soul, holy and filled with God: we discover the invisible God in the most visible and material things" (St. J. Escriva, "In Love with the Church", 52).

15-16. This very graphic example is similar to that in the First Letter of St. John: "If any one has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him?" (1 John 3:17); and the conclusion is also along the same lines: "Little children, let us not love in word or speech but in deed and in truth" (1 John 3:18). St. Paul gives the same teaching: "the Kingdom of God does not consist in talk but in power" (1 Corinthians 4:20). Actions, works, measure the genuineness of the Christian life; they show whether our faith and charity are real.

Almsgiving, for example, so often praised and recommended in Scripture (cf., e.g., Deuteronomy 15:11; Tobias 4:7-11; Luke 12:33; Acts 9:36; 2 Corinthians 8: 9), is very often a duty. Christ "will count a kindness done or refused to the poor as done or refused to Himself [...]. Whoever has received from the divine bounty a large share of temporal blessings whether they be external or material, or gifts of the mind, has received them for the purpose of using them for the perfecting of his own nature, and, at the same time, that he may employ them, as the steward of God's providence, for the benefit of others" (Leo XIII, "Rerum Novarum", 24).

17. As well as involving firm adherence to revealed truth, faith must influence a Christian's ordinary life and be a standard against which he measures his conduct. When one's works are not in accordance with one's beliefs, then one's faith is dead.

Christian teaching also describes as "dead faith" the faith of a person in mortal sin: because he is not in the grace of God he does not have charity, which is as it were the soul of all the other virtues. "Faith without hope and charity neither perfectly unites a man with Christ nor makes him a living member of His body. Therefore it is said most truly that 'faith apart from works is dead' (James 2:17ff) and useless" (Council of Trent, "De Iustificatione", 7).

18. The Apostle makes it crystal clear that faith without work makes no sense at all. "The truth of faith includes not only inner belief, but also outward profession, which is expressed not only by declaration of one's belief, but also by the actions by which a person shows that he has faith" (St. Thomas, "Summa Theologiae", II-II, q. 124, a. 5).
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Source: "The Navarre Bible: Text and Commentaries". Biblical text taken from the Revised Standard Version and New Vulgate. Commentaries made by members of the Faculty of Theology of the University of Navarre, Spain. Published by Four Courts Press, Kill Lane, Blackrock, Co. Dublin, Ireland. Reprinted with permission from Four Courts Press and Scepter Publishers, the U.S. publisher.