Posted on 12/17/2005 7:10:55 AM PST by NYer
VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Even those who spend their lives serving the church must recognize that faith alone will save them, the preacher of the papal household told Pope Benedict XVI and his closest aides.
"Christianity does not start with that which man must do to save himself, but with what God has done to save him," Capuchin Father Raniero Cantalamessa said in his Dec. 16 Advent meditation.
The preacher told the pope and top Vatican officials that they, like St. Paul, must avoid any temptation to think that the good works they have accomplished will guarantee their salvation.
"Gratuitous justification through faith in Christ is the heart" of St. Paul's preaching "and it is a shame that this has been practically absent from the ordinary preaching of the church," he said.
Father Cantalamessa said that the Protestant Reformation debate over the role of faith and works led the Catholic Church to focus so much on the need for the demonstration of faith in actions that it practically ignored the need for faith in the first place.
St. Paul, in his Letter to the Philippians, warned believers of the "mortal danger" of putting their own good works between them and Christ, as if the works would save them, Father Cantalamessa said.
Conversion to the fact that faith in Christ is the only means of salvation "is the conversion most needed by those who already are following Christ and have lived at the service of his church," the Capuchin said.
"It is a special conversion that does not consist in abandoning the bad, but abandoning the good, in a way," he said. "It means detaching oneself from everything one has done, repeating to oneself, 'We are useless servants; we have done only what was required.'"
Father Cantalamessa told a familiar Italian story about the shepherds near Bethlehem going to visit the newborn Jesus, each of them trying to outdo the others with the beauty of the gifts they offered.
One poor shepherd had nothing and was ashamed.
"Mary could not figure out how to accept all the gifts, since she was holding the baby in her arms," he said. "So, seeing the poor shepherd with his hands free, she handed Jesus to him."
"Having his hands free was his fortune and it should be ours as well," Father Cantalamessa said.
I'll just sit back and watch the fireworks.
AMEN!!!
That priest apparently hasn't read his Bible. Is he even Catholic? Let's just examine this statement:
What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him?
If a brother or sister has nothing to wear and has no food for the day,
and one of you says to them, "Go in peace, keep warm, and eat well," but you do not give them the necessities of the body, what good is it?
So also faith of itself, if it does not have works, is dead.
Indeed someone might say, "You have faith and I have works." Demonstrate your faith to me without works, and I will demonstrate my faith to you from my works.
You believe that God is one. You do well. Even the demons believe that and tremble.
Do you want proof, you ignoramus, that faith without works is useless?
Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered his son Isaac upon the altar?
You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was completed by the works.
Thus the scripture was fulfilled that says, "Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness," and he was called "the friend of God."
See how a person is justified by works and not by faith alone.
And in the same way, was not Rahab the harlot also justified by works when she welcomed the messengers and sent them out by a different route?
For just as a body without a spirit is dead, so also faith without works is dead.
Of course, many will accuse us Catholics of not knowing our Bible...but this comes from Scripture. I'll not bother to cite the reference.
The preacher told the pope and top Vatican officials that they, like St. Paul, must avoid any temptation to think that the good works they have accomplished will guarantee their salvation.
Ummm, I think this is quite orthodox. The Church has always taught that it is Jesus who saves through His sacrifice, but that faith without works is dead (see St. James, for example). This doesn't sound like a big deal...
It is is grace that saves. What he is saying is that works alone won't save. It is pretty Orthodox. Too many Catholics think or believe that all they need to do is be good and then they will be saved. Faith is left out of the equation all together. God gives us the grace which allows for faith which produces works.
Father Cantalamessa's 3rd Advent Sermon (Part 1)
The Righteousness That Comes From Faith in Christ
VATICAN CITY, DEC. 16, 2005 (Zenit.org).- Here is a translation of the Advent sermon delivered today by Capuchin Father Raniero Cantalamessa, Pontifical Household preacher, in the presence of Benedict XVI and members of the Roman Curia.
The sermon was the third in a series. Father Cantalamessa is offering a series of reflections on the theme "'For What We Preach Is Not Ourselves but Jesus Christ as Lord' (2 Corinthians 4:5): Faith in Christ Today."
* * *
St. Paul's Faith in Christ
1. Justified by Faith in Christ
Last time we sought to make our faith in Christ more ardent through contact with the faith of John the Evangelist; this time we will try to do the same, but this time through making contact with the faith of the Apostle Paul.
When St. Paul, from Corinth, in the years 57-58, wrote the Letter to the Romans, he would have still been active and ardent in the memory of the rejection he encountered some years before in Athens in his discourse at the Areopagus. Nonetheless, at the beginning of the letter he speaks confidently of having received the grace of apostleship "to bring about the obedience of faith, for the sake of his name, among all the Gentiles" (Romans 1:5).
Obedience, and in addition to that, among all the gentiles! His failure hadn't scratched in the least his certainty that the Gospel "is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes" (Romans 1:16). In that moment, the vast work of taking the Gospel to the ends of the world was yet to be done. Shouldn't it have seemed to be an impossible and absurd task? But Paul says: "for I know him in whom I have believed" (2 Timothy 1:12), and 2,000 years has justified his audacious faith.
I reflected over these things the first time that I visited Athens and Corinth and I told myself: "If today we had just a small grain of Paul's faith, we wouldn't let ourselves be intimidated by the fact that the world has yet to be evangelized, and even more, that it rejects, at times contemptuously, like the Areopagites, being evangelized."
Faith in Christ, for Paul, is everything. "Insofar as I now live in the flesh," he writes as a testament in the Letter to the Galatians, "I live by faith in the Son of God who has loved me and given himself up for me" (Galatians 2:20).[1]
When one speaks of faith in St. Paul one thinks spontaneously of the great theme of justification by faith in Christ. And on this we wish to concentrate our attention, not to outline the umpteenth discussion on the topic, but to receive his consoling message. I was saying in the first meditation that there currently exists a need for kerygmatic preaching, suitable to incite faith where it has never existed, or where it has died. Gratuitous justification by faith in Christ is the heart of this type of preaching, and it is a shame that this is, in turn, practically absent from ordinary preaching in the Church.
In this respect something strange has occurred. To the objections raised by the reformers, the Council of Trent had given a Catholic response, that there is a place for faith and for good works, each one, it was understood, in its place. One is not saved by good works, but one cannot be saved without good works. Nevertheless, from this moment in which the Protestants insisted unilaterally on faith, Catholic preaching and spirituality ended up accepting the nearly exclusive and thankless work of calling to mind the need for good works and of one's personal contribution to salvation. The result is that the great majority of Catholics have lived entire lives without having ever heard a direct announcement of gratuitous justification by faith, without too many "buts."
After the agreement on this topic in 1999, between the Catholic Church and the Lutheran World Federation, the situation changed in terms of principle, but it's still difficult to put it into practice. The desire is expressed in the text of that agreement that the common doctrine on justification be put into practice, making it part of the lived experience of the faithful, and not simply the subject of learned discussions among theologians. This is what we propose to achieve, at least in small part, in the present meditation. Before anything else, let us read the text:
"All have sinned and are deprived of the glory of God. They are justified freely by his grace through the redemption in Christ Jesus, whom God set forth as an expiation, through faith, by his blood, to prove his righteousness because of the forgiveness of sins previously committed, through the forbearance of God -- to prove his righteousness in the present time, that he might be righteous and justify the one who has faith in Jesus" (Romans 3:23-26).
Nothing of this text can be understood, even to the point that it could inspire fear more than consolation (as occurred for centuries), if the term "righteousness of God" is interpreted incorrectly. It was Luther who rediscovered that "righteousness of God" does not indicate here chastisement, or worse, his revenge, toward man, but rather it indicates, on the contrary, the act through which God "makes" man "just." (He really said "declares," not "makes," just, because he was thinking of an extrinsic or legal justification, in an imputation of justice, more than a real being made just.)
I said "rediscovered," because much earlier than him St. Augustine had written: "The 'righteousness of God' is used in the sense of our being made righteous by his gift ('iustitia Dei, qua iusti eius munere efficimur'), and 'the salvation of the Lord' (Psalm 3:9), in that we are saved by him."[2]
The concept of "righteousness of God" was explained in the Letter to Titus: "But when the kindness and generous love of God our savior appeared, not because of any righteous deeds we had done but because of his mercy" (Titus 3:4-5). Saying "The righteousness of God appeared," is the same as saying: The goodness of God, his love and his mercy appeared. It was not man who, all of a sudden, changed life and tradition and put himself to the task of doing good; the novelty is that God acted, he was the first to extend his hand out to sinful man, and his action fulfilled time.
Here is the novelty that distinguishes the Christian religion from any other. Any other religion draws out for man a path to salvation by means of practical observations and intellectual speculations, promising him, as a final prize, salvation and illumination, but leaving him substantially alone in achieving the task. Christianity does not begin with what man must do to save himself, but rather with what God has done to save him. The order is reversed.
It is true that to love God with all your heart is "the first and greatest of the commandments," but the commandments are not primary, they are secondary. Before the order of commandments comes the order of gift and of grace. Christianity is the religion of grace! If this is not taken into consideration in interreligious dialogue, the dialogue would be able to do no more than generate confusion and doubts in the hearts of many Christians.
2. Justification and conversion
I would like now to show how the doctrine of gratuitous justification by faith is not an invention of Paul, but rather the pure teaching of Jesus. At the start of his ministry, Jesus proclaimed: "This is the time of fulfillment. The Kingdom of God is at hand. Convert, and believe in the gospel" (Mark 1:15). What Christ includes in the expression "Kingdom of God," that is, the salvific initiative of God, his offering of salvation to humanity, St. Paul calls "righteousness of God," but it deals with the same fundamental reality: "Kingdom of God" and "righteousness of God" are brought together when Jesus says: "Seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness" (Matthew 6:33). "Jesus," wrote St. Cyril of Alexandria, "calls the 'kingdom of God' justification through faith, baptismal purification and communion of the Spirit."[3]
When Jesus said: "Convert, and believe in the Gospel," he was already teaching justification by faith. Before him, conversion always meant "to go back" (in Hebrew the same word is used for both "convert" and "to go back": the word "shub"); it meant to go back to the broken alliance by way of a renewed observance of the law.
Consequently, conversion has a principally ascetic, moral and penitential meaning, and is achieved by changing how one lives. Conversion is seen as a condition for salvation; the sense is: Convert and be saved; convert and salvation will come to you. In the mouth of Jesus this moral meaning passes to a second plane (at least at the start of his preaching), with respect to a new significance, until now unknown.
Conversion no longer means to go back, to the old alliance and to the observance of the law; it means rather to take a step forward, to enter into a new alliance, to hold onto this Kingdom that has appeared, and to enter into it. And entering it by faith: "Convert and believe" does not mean two different and successive things, but rather the same action: convert, so as to believe; convert believing! "Prima conversio ad Deum fit per fidem," writes St. Thomas Aquinas: "The first conversion to God consists in believing."[4]
"Convert and believe" means therefore: Pass from the old alliance, based on the law, to the new alliance, based on faith. The Apostle says the same with the doctrine of justification by faith. The only difference is owed to what had happened, meanwhile, between the preaching of Jesus and Paul: Christ had been rejected and led to death for the sins of man. The faith "in the Gospel" ("believe in the Gospel") now takes shape as faith "in Jesus Christ," "in his blood" (Romans 3:25).
3. Faith-appropriation
Everything, then, depends on faith. But we know that there are different types of faith: There is the faith-acquiescence of the intellect, the faith-confidence, the faith-stability, as Isaiah calls it (7:9). What type of faith is addressed when talking about justification "by faith?" It addresses a special type of faith: the faith-appropriation. It does not tire me to cite in this respect a text of St. Bernard:
"But as for me, whatever is lacking in my own resources I appropriate for myself from the heart of the Lord, which overflows with mercy. My merit therefore is the mercy of the Lord. Surely I am not devoid of merit so long as he is not of mercy. And if the Lord abounds in mercy, I too must abound in merits (Psalm 119:156). But would this be my own righteousness? Lord, I will be mindful of your righteousness only. For that is also mine, since God has made you my righteousness."[5]
It is written in fact: "Jesus Christ became for us wisdom from God, as well as righteousness, sanctification and redemption" (1 Corinthians 1:30). "For us," not for himself! We pertain more to Christ than to ourselves, as he has bought us at a great price (1 Corinthians 6:20), and inversely what is Christ's pertains more to us than if it were ours. I call this the blow of audacity, or the flutter, in Christian life.
St. Cyril of Jerusalem expressed it like this, it is the same conviction in other words: "Oh the extraordinary goodness of God toward man? The just of the Old Testament thank God in the weariness of long years; but that which they obtained, by means of a long and heroic service pleasing to God, Jesus gives to you in the brief time span of an hour. Indeed, if you believe that Jesus Christ is the lord, and that God had raised him from the dead, you will be saved and you will be introduced into heaven by the same one who introduced the good thief."[6]
* * *
[1] Today there are those who want to see the expression "faith in the Son of God," or "faith in Christ," frequently used in the writings of Paul (Romans 3:22,26; Galatians 2:16; 2:20; 3:22; Philippians 3:9), as a genitive subject, as if they were addressing the faith of Christ, or the fidelity which he proved by sacrificing himself for us. I prefer to keep with the traditional interpretation, followed as well by authorized contemporary exegetes (cf. Dunn, op. cit., pp. 380-386), that see in Christ the object, not the subject of faith; not so much the faith of Christ (supposing that we could speak of Christ having faith), but rather faith in Christ. On this the Apostle based his own life, and in this he invites us to base our own.
[2] St. Augustine, "The Spirit and the Letter," 32, 56 (PL 44, 237).
[3] St. Cyril of Alexandria, "Commentary on the Gospel of Luke," 22, 26 (PG 72905).
[4] St. Thomas Aquinas, "Summa Theologiae," I-IIae, q.113, a. 4.
[5] St. Bernard of Clairvaux, "Sermons on the Song of Songs," 61, 4-5 (PL 183, 1072).
[6] Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechesis V, 10 (PG 33, 517).
**I'll just sit back and watch the fireworks.**
Ditto!
"One is not saved by good works, but one cannot be saved without good works."
an important line from his sermon.
And what about the Beatitudes?
GASP! He quoted Luther, the heretic! Better get the fires started!
Also, 'faith' equals 'belief.'
Jesus Christ reprimands us to not rely on works as a means for salvation, and that's key. He doesn't say, "don't do good works, don't regard good works as valuable and appreciated and often inspired by God"...He says that we are to have faith and do as He commands, but that He's the way to salvation, and without faith, belief in Him, there's no salvation.
"No man comes to the Father but by me." Jesus Christ says that.
"GASP! He quoted Luther, the heretic! Better get the fires started!"
stopped clock... twice a day :-)
This message to my view and understanding counters the presumption that up until Christ was man and resurrected, that the message up to that point was to rely on good deeds, doing good works and that by your works you were found worthy, were awarded with Heaven, eternal life.
Christ said that faith and works go handinhand, but that works without faith/belief, and faith without works..."is dead."
Lecture Christ made to the Pharissees about that, people focused on their presumption of salvation because of their good works, but who failed to accept, believe, in Him.
Don't be an ignoramus.
Luther was a disaffected employee. Bitter...angry and out of control.
Well, sort of. The real message is that the Old Covenant works/law system was insufficient to reconcile man to God, that it was a mere foreshadowing of the reality in Messiah Jesus, and that, as the prophet Isaiah wrote (Chap. 64), "all our righteous acts are like filthy rags"
No human being (except for Jesus) was capable of obeying the OC law completely.
The Good News of the Gospel is that we can rely on Jesus for eternal life, NOT our own works, but that we perform good works as a result of the work that Jesus did for us, on our behalf.
Jesus is Our Redeemer; we are not.
What You Must Do to Be Saved
Best of all, the promise of eternal life is a gift, freely offered to us by God (CCC 1727). Our initial forgiveness and justification are not things we "earn" (CCC 2010). Jesus is the mediator who bridged the gap of sin that separates us from God (1 Tim. 2:5); he bridged it by dying for us. He has chosen to make us partners in the plan of salvation (1 Cor. 3:9).
The Catholic Church teaches what the apostles taught and what the Bible teaches: We are saved by grace alone, but not by faith alone (which is what "Bible Christians" teach; see Jas. 2:24).
When we come to God and are justified (that is, enter a right relationship with God), nothing preceding justification, whether faith or good works, earns grace. But then God plants his love in our hearts, and we should live out our faith by doing acts of love (Gal. 6:2).
Even though only God’s grace enables us to love others, these acts of love please him, and he promises to reward them with eternal life (Rom. 2:6–7, Gal. 6:6–10). Thus good works are meritorious. When we first come to God in faith, we have nothing in our hands to offer him. Then he gives us grace to obey his commandments in love, and he rewards us with salvation when we offer these acts of love back to him (Rom. 2:6–11, Gal. 6:6–10, Matt. 25:34–40).
Jesus said it is not enough to have faith in him; we also must obey his commandments. "Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ but do not do the things I command?" (Luke 6:46, Matt. 7:21–23, 19:16–21).
We do not "earn" our salvation through good works (Eph. 2:8–9, Rom. 9:16), but our faith in Christ puts us in a special grace-filled relationship with God so that our obedience and love, combined with our faith, will be rewarded with eternal life (Rom. 2:7, Gal. 6:8–9).
Paul said, "God is the one who, for his good purpose, works in you both to desire and to work" (Phil. 2:13). John explained that "the way we may be sure that we know him is to keep his commandments. Whoever says, ‘I know him,’ but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him" (1 John 2:3–4, 3:19–24, 5:3–4).
Since no gift can be forced on the recipient—gifts always can be rejected—even after we become justified, we can throw away the gift of salvation. We throw it away through grave (mortal) sin (John 15:5–6, Rom. 11:22–23, 1 Cor. 15:1–2; CCC 1854–1863). Paul tells us, "The wages of sin is death" (Rom. 6:23).
Read his letters and see how often Paul warned Christians against sin! He would not have felt compelled to do so if their sins could not exclude them from heaven (see, for example, 1 Cor. 6:9–10, Gal. 5:19–21).
Paul reminded the Christians in Rome that God "will repay everyone according to his works: eternal life for those who seek glory, honor, and immortality through perseverance in good works, but wrath and fury to those who selfishly disobey the truth and obey wickedness" (Rom. 2:6–8).
Sins are nothing but evil works. We can avoid sins by habitually performing good works. Every saint has known that the best way to keep free from sins is to embrace regular prayer, the sacraments (the Eucharist first of all), and charitable acts.
There's more to it than simply believing - there's the doing part of it as well.
http://www.catholic.com/library/pillar.asp
My post was relevant to you in that you want to proclaim that we are to perform good works and yet you disobey the clear teaching of Jesus to not insult your brother...or be in danger of hellfire.
You decide, my friend. :-)
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