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By Fr. Roy Cimagala

THERE is, of course, a close relation between our faith and our works. As St. James said in his letter, “show me your faith apart from your works, and I by my works will show you my faith.” (2,18)

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He said earlier that faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead. It profits a man nothing if he says he has faith but has no works. “Can his faith save him?” he asked. “If a brother or sister is ill-clad and in lack of daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace, be warmed and filled,’ without giving him the things needed for the body, what does it profit?” So, faith if real will always be shown in works.

But we need to be clear about one thing in this relationship. While there is a close relationship between our faith and our works, they cannot be held equal and identical. Faith is faith which is a supernatural gift. While our works are a product of our own effort which can never be made supernatural unless done with faith or with God’s grace.

To think that we can achieve sanctity by faith alone is to fall into an anomaly or a heresy called Gnosticism. While to consider that sanctity can be attained through our human works alone without the faith is to fall into the heresy of Pelagianism. These two heresies have been recently denounced in that document of Pope Francis, “Gaudete et exsultate.”

Let us remember that there are abundant pieces of evidence of people who think and say they are holy or saintly but their evil works betray their fervent profession of their faith. And also, there are people who do a lot of good works and yet they are not holy because their works lead them to the sins of pride, vanity, greed and the like.

Yes, we should have as strong and deep a faith as possible and it should be somehow verified by our works. Our faith should so inspire and shape our life and everything in it, especially our works, should show that faith.

Our works, to be truly good and capable of sanctifying us, should be sanctified first of all by our faith and the grace of God. Without the latter, our works would only be apparently good and can occasion many other dangers to us.

We need to see to it that we take care of growing in our faith and of making it affect, as in inspiring and shaping, all the aspects of our life. We can never say we have enough faith. Our life can never be made supernatural, nor can it be conformed to Christ who is the pattern of our humanity, if it is not a life shaped by our faith.

Of course, our faith has to be translated into action and into life itself. That is the role of our human works which are also indispensable. For faith without works, as St. James again said, is dead.

We have to learn how to begin and end everything that we do with God. This is what is meant in that liturgical prayer: “Ut cuncta nostra oratio et operatio a te semper incipiat and per te coepta finiatur,” that all our prayers and acts may always begin with you (God) and through you are completed.

This should be the normal way of behaving, for without God, without faith, no matter how brilliant our acts may be according to human standards, they simply will not bring us to our proper end. In fact, they may even pose as a danger to us.

This proper understanding of the relation between our faith and our works has to be taught and spread far and wide, starting with the family and the schools and in all other levels of our society.

***

We live in an imperfect world. This should be no surprise to us, no breaking news. We just have to acknowledge this very obvious fact and avoid falling into two extremes. One is that of perfectionism, when we think everything will just be rigidly perfect, and anything that stains and distorts it should be rejected at all costs. The other is complete laxity, when we think that just about anything should be ok with us.

Yes, we are in an imperfect world, but a world that is always in the process of perfecting itself through the interplay of God’s grace and our effort and correspondence to that grace. We are in a world in the making, a work in progress, aiming at becoming “a new heaven and a new earth.” (cfr. Jn 21,1)

Besides, what makes our world more imperfect is that we all have fallen into sin which would make our correspondence to God’s grace more complicated. Given this reality, we just have to learn to help one another to cope properly with this condition.

Things depend both on God and on us, with God always taking the initiative and bent on completing what he started. Ours is simply to play along with God’s will and ways, but knowingly and freely and lovingly, as befit our dignity as God’s image and likeness, as children of his. Our part, of course, is no laughing matter. It requires everything that we have got.

In this regard, we have to see to it that while we should try our best to know what is right and wrong as defined by God our Creator, and live our life according to that law, we should not ignore the fact that evil will always be around, harassing us, and we just have to learn how to live with that.

Yes, we should try always to be clean, even squeaky clean as much as possible, but let’s not forget that one way or another, sooner or later, we somehow get dirty. So we just have to learn to clean ourselves again as soon as possible, and move on without much delay.

That we should not be overly rigid in our desire to be perfect is somehow illustrated in that parable of the unjust or shrewd steward. (cfr Lk 16,1-13) The steward was about to be fired by his master because he was reported to be squandering his master’s goods.

Since he was not too strong to dig and was ashamed to beg, what he did to secure his future was to curry favor with his master’s debtors who hopefully would return the favour once he got out of job.

The master apparently knew about this but just the same he commended the steward for acting with shrewdness. And Christ, deriving the lesson from that parable, said that while what the steward did was wrong, he did right in being shrewd.

Christ was clear about not serving two masters, God and mammon. But he also said, “make friends for yourselves by unrighteous mammon, that when you fail, they may receive you into an everlasting home.” (Lk 16,9)

What the parable tries to tell us is that we should just do what we can to survive, even if it is wrong. When we would be cornered already with no other possibility for survival, we can play shrewd. We should just make up later for whatever wrongdoing we may be pressured to do.

It’s like saying that in this world, we cannot help but be dirty, what with all the evil elements and powerful structures of sin around. We should just bear with it and try to clean ourselves as soon as the chance comes along.

Of course, if the choice between good and evil takes place at our final moment, there is no doubt that we should just learn to suffer the inconveniences of good over the perks of evil.

E-mail: roycimagala@gmail.com

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