He didn't say, "faith alone"

[Bookcat]

"We are often induced to fall into the same misunderstandings that characterized the community of Corinth; those Christians thought that since they had been freely justified in Christ through faith, “they could do as they pleased”. And they believed and it often seems that today’s Christians also think this that it is permissible to create divisions in the Church, the Body of Christ, to celebrate the Eucharist without looking after the neediest of our brothers, to aspire to better charisms without being aware that each is a member of the other, and so forth. The consequences of a faith that is not manifested in love are disastrous, because it reduces itself to the arbitrariness and subjectivism that is most harmful to us and to our brothers. On the contrary, in following St Paul, we should gain a new awareness of the fact that precisely because we are justified in Christ, we no longer belong to ourselves but have become a temple of the Spirit and hence are called to glorify God in our body with the whole of our existence (cf. 1 Cor 6: 19). We would be underselling the inestimable value of justification, purchased at the high price of Christ’s Blood, if we were not to glorify him with our body. In fact, our worship at the same time reasonable and spiritual is exactly this, which is why St Paul exhorts us “to present [our] bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God” (Rm 12: 1). To what would a liturgy be reduced if addressed solely to the Lord without simultaneously becoming service to one’s brothers, a faith that would not express itself in charity? And the Apostle often places his communities in confrontation with the Last Judgment, on the occasion of which: “we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive good or evil, according to what he has done in the body” (2 Cor 5: 10; cf. also Rm 2: 16). And this idea of the Last Judgment must illumine us in our daily lives.

If the ethics that Paul proposes to believers do not deteriorate into forms of moralism and prove themselves timely for us, it is because, each time, they start from the personal and communal relationship with Christ, to be realized concretely in a life according to the Spirit. This is essential: the Christian ethic is not born from a system of commandments but is a consequence of our friendship with Christ. This friendship influences life; if it is true it incarnates and fulfils itself in love for neighbour. For this reason, any ethical decay is not limited to the individual sphere but it also weakens personal and communal faith from which it derives and on which it has a crucial effect. Therefore let us allow ourselves to be touched by reconciliation, which God has given us in Christ, by God’s “foolish” love for us; nothing and no one can ever separate us from his love (cf. Rm 8: 39). We live in this certainty. It is this certainty that gives us the strength to live concretely the faith that works in love. "

-Pope Benedict XVI

vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/audiences/2008/documents/hf_ben-xvi_aud_20081126_en.html

 

[Bookcat]

More…(Faith…Baptism…)

"However, the question now arises: how can we enter this new beginning, this new history? How does this new history reach me? We are inevitably linked to the first, contaminated history through our biological descendance, since we all belong to the one body of humanity; but how is communion with Jesus, how is new birth achieved in order to enter into the new humanity? How does Jesus come into my life, into my being? The fundamental response of St Paul and of the whole of the New Testament is that he comes through the action of the Holy Spirit. If the first history starts, so to speak, with biology, the second starts with the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of the Risen Christ. At Pentecost this Spirit created the beginning of the new humanity, the new community, the Church, the Body of Christ.

However we must be even more concrete: how can this Spirit of Christ, the Holy Spirit, become my Spirit? The answer is that this happens in three ways that are closely interconnected. This is the first: the Spirit of Christ knocks at the door of my heart, moves me from within. However since the new humanity must be a true body, since the Spirit must gather us together and really create a community, since overcoming divisions and creating a gathering of the dispersed is characteristic of the new beginning, this Spirit of Christ uses two elements visibly aggregated: the Word of the proclamation and the sacraments, Baptism and the Eucharist in particular. In his Letter to the Romans, St Paul says: “If you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved” (10: 9), in other words, you will enter the new history, a history of life and not of death. St Paul then continues: “But how are men to call upon him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without a preacher? And how can men preach unless they are sent?” (Rm 10: 14-15). In an ensuing passage he says further: “faith comes from what is heard” (Rm 10: 17). Faith is not a product of our thought or our reflection; it is something new that we cannot invent but only receive as a gift, as a new thing produced by God. Moreover, faith does not come from reading but from listening. It is not only something interior but also a relationship with Someone. It implies an encounter with the proclamation; it implies the existence of the Other, who it proclaims, and creates communion.

And lastly, proclamation: the one who proclaims does not speak on his own behalf but is sent. He fits into a structure of mission that begins with Jesus, sent by the Father, passes through the Apostles the term “apostles” means “those who are sent” and continues in the ministry, in the missions passed down by the Apostles. The new fabric of history takes shape in this structure of missions in which we ultimately hear God himself speaking, his personal Word, the Son speaks with us, reaches us. The Word was made flesh, Jesus, in order really to create a new humanity. The word of proclamation thus becomes a sacrament in Baptism, which is rebirth from water and the Spirit, as St John was to say. In the sixth chapter of the Letter to the Romans, St Paul speaks of Baptism in a very profound way. We have heard the text but it might be useful to repeat it: “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by Baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life” (6: 3-4).

In this Catechesis I cannot of course enter into a detailed interpretation of this far from easy text. I would like to note briefly just three points. The first: “we have been baptized” is a passive. No one can baptize himself, he needs the other. No one can become Christian on his own. Becoming Christian is a passive process. Only by another can we be made Christians and this “other” who makes us Christians, who gives us the gift of faith, is in the first instance the community of believers, the Church. From the Church we receive faith, Baptism. Unless we let ourselves be formed by this community we do not become Christians. An autonomous, self-produced Christianity is a contradiction in itself. In the first instance, this “other” is the community of believers, the Church, yet in the second instance this community does not act on its own either, according to its own ideas and desires. The community also lives in the same passive process: Christ alone can constitute the Church. Christ is the true giver of the sacraments. This is the first point: no one baptizes himself, no one makes himself a Christian. We become Christians.

This is the second point: Baptism is more than a cleansing. It is death and resurrection. Paul himself, speaking in the Letter to the Galatians of the turning point in his life brought about by his encounter with the Risen Christ, describes it with the words: I am dead. At that moment a new life truly begins. Becoming Christian is more than a cosmetic operation that would add something beautiful to a more or less complete existence. It is a new beginning, it is rebirth: death and resurrection. Obviously in the resurrection what was good in the previous existence reemerges.

The third point is: matter is part of the sacrament. Christianity is not a purely spiritual reality. It implies the body. It implies the cosmos. It is extended toward the new earth and the new heavens. Let us return to the last words of St Paul’s text. In this way he said, “we too might walk in newness of life”. It constitutes an examination of conscience for all of us: to walk in newness of life. This applies to Baptism."

–Pope Benedict XVI

vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/audiences/2008/documents/hf_ben-xvi_aud_20081210_en.html

 

[De_Maria]

Abraham according to Genesis was justified 3 times!

Why can’t Catholics be justified more than once?

I’m saying they should only be baptized once but God can justify them as many times as He wants.

1. A convert could in their heart want to convert to the Catholic faith.
2. They would receive grace at their first general confession.
3. They would receive grace at baptism if they had never been baptized.
4. They would receive grace at confirmation.

So tell me geniuses–of these four events–is there only one in which they are justified?

Was only ONE of Abraham’s justifications true justification?

As far as I know justification means being made right with God.

Are you going to tell me that a person in a state of grace even–that that person can’t be made MORE RIGHT with God?

Nope. I think you and I are saying precisely the same thing.

Sincerely,

De Maria

 

[De_Maria]

The point I am making is that he did not receive the Righteousness that comes from Christ until he was baptized. He may have been an upright man. But, even the most upright men are sinners and in need of Christ’s redemption.

That is besides any of the points we’ve been discussing.

1. He was already an upright man, therefore the process of justification had already begun for St. Cornelius.
2. The Sacraments, including Baptism, are a different mode of justification wherein God washes our souls by the action of the Holy Spirit.
3. Christ’s redemption of mankind occurred on the Cross. NO WORK WAS NECESSARY FROM ANYONE. Christ gave Himself voluntarily.
   Romans 5:8
   But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

It was His pure gift of love.

Sincerely,

De Maria

 

[De_Maria]

Christ gives to us graces freely once we believe that He is the Resurrection and the Life and a accept him, and the sign of acceptance is Baptism which begins the free flow of grace. At this point of time we are justified and if we die at this point we are saved.

Similarly for the other seven Sacraments where graces flow freely when we again acknowledge that He is the Resurrection and the Life; if we die after receiving all or one of these worthily, we are saved. Even if we have up to that point of time not done any good works, we will be saved because in order to receive any of these worthily, we must make the an Act of Contrition, which forgives us our sins of commission and omission (the good works we have not done).

Having received the Sacraments and receiving the graces from Him we MUST, with the grace provide by our loving God, manifest our faith by loving him with all our hearts and minds and serving him by loving our neighbor as our selves.

If we do not use the graces so generously provided, to love and serve him, then we cannot say that we have faith, or that we believe that He is our Saviour, or that we love him.

So, yes, we are justified by faith and works. Without good works we must continuously ask for forgiveness for our shortcomings and resolve to do what He asks us to do. But if after we resolve to serve him we still not do it, can we say we have faith? We have to ask ourselves, what have we done with the grace that he has given us? If we do not make use of this grace, like the servant in the parable who did not make use of the talent given to him, will we too be condemned?

To do good but not to believe in God, or not to believe in His Love, or not to believe in the great Sacrifice on the Cross, is to forfeit the opportunity to be eternally happy with Him in Heaven. What will be the reward be for those who are good and just? Definitely something short of eternal happiness - I would say eternal ecstasy - in the presence of the Almighty God. For how can you see God or be with Him if you do not believe?

I think we agree. The one question I have is the Sacraments. Do you understand that when we present ourselves for the Sacraments in the attitude of faith, we submit to God’s work in our souls? We bring nothing of our own except faith. God works in us.

That is why, in my opinion, St. Paul called it, justification by faith apart from works. It is not faith alone, which is dead because it has not been demonstrated in works of love. It is faith which has demonstrated its love for God and neighbor in good works, but which is now at rest, in expectation of God’s fulfillment of His promise to make us His Children and fill our hearts with His grace.

Sincerely,

De Maria

 

[De_Maria]

More…(Faith…Baptism…)…

–Pope Benedict XVI

vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/audiences/2008/documents/hf_ben-xvi_aud_20081210_en.html

Thanks for providing these Bookcat. But what do you think, does my explanation fit in with the Pope’s. I believe it does. Although I don’t think he was explaining precisely the same point about the process of justification as I.

If you see any point where you think I contradict the Pope, let me know.

Sincerely,

De Maria