Works Righteousness and the New Evangelization

The average Catholic would not understand what is meant by works righteousness unless he has been exposed to Protestant apologetics.  However, even among those Catholics who are quite versed in the Protestant criticisms of what Protestants perceive to be “works righteousness” and the Catholic response to such claims, these Catholics do not often “close the loop” in terms of the implications of the Catholic teaching that we are saved by faith and works.  What we mean by this is that such Catholics often reject in practice, if not in theory, the obligation of doing works for salvation.  Admittedly this is usually in reaction to other Catholics who claim that so-called social justice is the entirety of the Gospel.  Yet, ironically, such apologetically savvy Catholics end up in the same place as sola fide Protestants, in as much as Catholic social teaching is concerned.

A more complete description of Catholic teaching about the relationship between faith and works is essential then to the success of the New Evangelization because this kind of faith must be lived out as it is the only authentic faith.  Catholics who do not understand the inextricable link between faith and social teaching (i.e. works) can unwittingly be counter witnesses to the Gospel.  If more of us Catholics better lived this interrelationship, it would go a long way toward reconciling our separated brethren and increasing the ardor of the Church.

To begin to understand the nature of this interrelationship, we might point out that one cannot read the Gospels without seeing that Jesus Christ preaches there is something more to salvation than simply professing faith in Him.  We see Jesus responds to the young man’s question about what is necessary for eternal life by telling him he must keep the commandments, including loving one’s neighbor as oneself (Mt 19:19).  Recognizing that he lacked something, the young man asked what he still lacked.  Jesus told him that the perfection necessary for entering the kingdom of heaven required this man to give all he had to the poor in order to follow Jesus (Mt 19:21).  These works required for eternal life are not reducible to a one-time expression of faith in Jesus Christ as one’s personal Lord and Savior.  Rather, Jesus clearly teaches what St. James echoes when he says that the manifestation of faith through works is the only saving faith (James 2:14-18).  This is exactly why James calls a faith without works, dead, saying it does no good to tell a brother to go in peace, be warm and well fed without doing anything to ensure the brother is clothed and fed. Such a lifeless faith cannot save.

From this perspective, we can better understand why Jesus’ warning that at our judgment the goats who will be separated from the sheep and be sent to the eternal fire (Mt 25:41) is not directed to murderers, adulterers, thieves, and liars.  Such sinners need no warning, as they already know their fate.  Those of us who need the warning are those who think we can simply say Lord, Lord to get into His wedding feast; it is not such but only those who prepare themselves (see Mt 19:11).  It is not sufficient to simply have listened to Him; we must also do (work) what He commands (Lk 6:46).  This is why Jesus warns us that those of us who will go to hell are those who will not do works of love for Him in the least of our brothers and sisters (Mt 25:40).  We cannot love God who we do not see, if we do not love our neighbors who we do see (1 Jn 4:20).  And such love entails sharing our goods with those who do not have them (1 Jn 3:17); we must love not simply in word but also in deed (1 Jn 3:18).  This is because if faith is not lived out in authentic love it is the faith of demons (James 2:19).  Jesus warns us that we must bear fruit (i.e. works of love) if we are to go to heaven, in such images as the servants and the talents (Mt 25:14-30), the vine and the branches (Jn 15:1-6), and the parable of the Sower of the Word (Mt 4:1-20).  In fact, rather than detracting from His glory, Jesus says that it is through bearing fruit in works of love that we glorify the Father (Jn 15:8).

How is this to be understood?  What is it about being Jesus’ disciples that demand we bear fruit in works of love? Perhaps the best place to start in understanding this meaning of discipleship is to recall that Jesus warned those who would follow Him must take up their cross (Mt 16:24).  We must be willing to give up our very lives as did our Master if we are to be His disciples.  This is what St. Paul has in mind when he rejoices in his sufferings.  He says: “Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church,…” (Col 1:24).  This passage is shocking if one reads it closely.  St. Paul appears to be both a masochist for rejoicing in suffering and he seems to be a blasphemer in claiming that there was any deficiency in Jesus’ suffering on the Cross.  What are to we make of St. Paul?

Well, we need to admit that joyful suffering makes absolutely no sense from a purely human point of view.  Suffering snuck in the door along with death when it was opened by the sin of our first parents.  Suffering is not God’s creation.  In fact, suffering is a state of privation in which some good in God’s creation has been deformed because a necessary part of it has been removed.  For example, in the suffering of sickness, health has been removed.  Suffering can only be rejoiced over if its meaning has been transformed, and this is the message of the Cross. 

The Cross up-ends the sin of Adam and Eve; it undoes their refusal to give themselves totally to God in trust, love and thanksgiving; a refusal that separated them and all of the cosmos from Him.  In the Cross, Jesus returns Himself to the Father in an act of trust, love and thanksgiving.  In this act of total Self-gift, He returns Himself and all of humanity to God.  His love which leads to His suffering and death (see Jn 15:13) is now the archetype for the love of His disciples (1 Jn 3:16).

It is through this lens, the lens of a love of total self gift which will not even hold one back from giving himself in suffering to the loss of his life, that the Master has given us the example to follow.  This is what Jesus has called us to.  This is why St. Faustina tells us the Angels would envy Christians, if they could envy, for the capacity to suffer for Christ and the least of His brethren because it is then we are closest to our Master.  But how is does this work? How do we gain greater intimacy with Christ through our sufferings?

This brings us to the blasphemous aspect of Paul’s shocking statement.  Here St. Paul is recalling 1 Corinthians 12:12-27 and Ephesian 5:29; we are indeed the Body of Christ, the Church.  Notice that St. Paul does not say that Jesus’ sufferings were lacking in efficacy for salvation.  What he says, assumes the Christus Totus, the “whole Christ” as St. Augustine called the Church; the Church includes the Head and the members. St. Paul means that the members of the Church throughout time have yet to suffer in order to cooperate with Christ in the building up of the Church.  Our sufferings can be rejoiced in only if Jesus really does call us to be His co-workers in the most radical of ways (see 1 Cor 3:9 and Col 4:11).  Jesus lifts up the dignity of our work by joining us to Him in His Body, that is the Church, in such an intimate way that our sufferings do indeed become the same sufferings of the Cross.  It is only the sufferings of the Cross that can be effective for salvation, that is for the building up of the Church.  If St. Paul’s sufferings (and our sufferings) are not made (by the Holy Spirit incorporating each of us into Christ’s Body, the Church, through Baptism) to be one and the same sufferings of the Cross then St. Paul is, ironically, the one who is preaching a blasphemous works righteousness here.  But we know that St. Paul was inspired and so the only possible conclusion is the one that fits with the entire picture we have painted here.  Saving faith is lived out in acts of love which become Jesus’ act of love on the Cross and this is possible only through the actual incorporation of the Christian into the Church, the Body, through Baptism.  Any other definition of faith is no faith at all; it is the same faith the devil possesses.

Catholics who want to be faithful to Jesus Christ and His Church cannot shun the Church’s social teaching simply because there are those who want to replace the Gospel with social work.  In fact, in doing so we are not only abandoning those drawn by temperament to such work, to a community that will likely drain the work of its salvific value, we are proclaiming to the rest of the world (by inaction) that the fullness of the Gospel is the empty idea Satan claims it to be.    For more on these themes, see our articles on the New Evangelization and the Human Person and the New Evangelization and Discipleship.