Our People

Justification by Faith

Homily for the "Call to Holiness" Conference Mass at Belfield

By Most Rev. Julian Porteous
Auxiliary Bishop of Sydney
15 October 2005

We have been reading this week the opening sections of St Paul’s letter to the Romans. This letter is different from other letters of his in that it is being written to a community that Paul has not personally founded or known. It is, to an extent, a letter of introduction of himself to the fledgling Christian community in the city that is the political centre of the great empire that covers the known world of that time.

The letter becomes St Paul’s formal theological reflection on the Christian mystery that has totally consumed his whole life – the mystery of the plan of God for the salvation of mankind accomplished in Jesus Christ.

It is a letter worthy of serious and prayerful consideration by all who seek to live a life in Christ. While occasionally dense the thought of St Paul touches key elements in the Christian mystery and presents understands that are profound and fundamentally formative of Christian spirituality and theology.

Today’s reading is in the centre of his consideration of the question of “justification by faith”, a key tenant in his theological explanation of how each individual believer come to participate in and benefit from the saving act of God in the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.

The fundamental question St Paul is addressing is a universal question for all people who acknowledge the existence of a supreme being. Know the absolute otherness of God and the holiness of God, how do we as imperfect, frail humans, subject to all sorts of discordant passions and weighed down by temptations, knowing our personal history of failure (we call it “sin”), stand to be justified in the sight of God?

The history of religions has proposed some approaches.

• Some propose rites of purification, e.g., ritual purifications are common in primitive religions.
• Some propose processes of enlightenment and self mastery, eg. in Buddhism, Yoga.
• Some propose esoteric spiritualizing, e.g., New Age.
• Some propose obedience of often complicated religious and moral laws, e.g., the Pharisees of whom Jesus was critical.

What is the Christian response to this question? This is what St Paul is presenting in the opening chapters of his letter to the Romans.

His answer in a nutshell is we are justified in God’s sight not by obedience to the law, but by faith.

We do need to ask, how does St Paul understand “faith”?

Faith is generally understood as believing is things not evident to the senses. Hence we believe in an invisible God. We believe in the reality of the spiritual. We believe in the existence of Heaven (and, indeed, Hell).

We also speak of having faith in a person (whom we can see). Here we believe in the character of the person. This person can be trusted.

This is the further dimension of faith that St Paul is particularly interested in. He takes the example of Abraham, the father of the Jewish people, and asks: what justified Abraham in the sight of God? His answer is simple Abraham trusted God and obeyed his call to leave his own country and go to a land that he would be shown. And trust in the promise that he would be the father of a great nation though he was at the time childless.

Abraham believed, trusted and obeyed. Thus, he was justified by his faith.

My brothers and sisters, our path as Catholics, our path in holiness, is one of faith. We believe, we entrust ourselves to God, we are faithful, we seek the will of God. We trust not in ourselves. We do not seek to justify ourselves before God or men. We humbly walk a path of surrender and submission to the mystery of Christ. We rely upon the mercy of God to give us grace and before his judgement seat to raise us up to eternal life.