CCC Cross Reference:
Jas 2:14-26 162; Jas 2:15-16 2447; Jas 2:26 1815
Mk 8:34 459, 1615; Mk 8:35 2544
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Reading 1
Jas 2:14-24, 26
What good is it, my brothers and sisters,
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.
For just as a body without a spirit is dead,
so also faith without works is dead.
Responsorial Psalm
112:1-2, 3-4, 5-6
R. (see 1b) Blessed the man who greatly delights in the Lord’s commands.
Blessed the man who fears the Lord,
who greatly delights in his commands.
His posterity shall be mighty upon the earth;
the upright generation shall be blessed.
R. Blessed the man who greatly delights in the Lord’s commands.
Wealth and riches shall be in his house;
his generosity shall endure forever.
Light shines through the darkness for the upright;
he is gracious and merciful and just.
R. Blessed the man who greatly delights in the Lord’s commands.
Well for the man who is gracious and lends,
who conducts his affairs with justice;
He shall never be moved;
the just man shall be in everlasting remembrance.
R. Blessed the man who greatly delights in the Lord’s commands.
Gospel
Mk 8:34–9:1
Jesus summoned the crowd with his disciples and said to them,
“Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself,
take up his cross, and follow me.
For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it,
but whoever loses his life for my sake
and that of the Gospel will save it.
What profit is there for one to gain the whole world
and forfeit his life?
What could one give in exchange for his life?
Whoever is ashamed of me and of my words
in this faithless and sinful generation,
the Son of Man will be ashamed of
when he comes in his Father’s glory with the holy angels.”
He also said to them,
“Amen, I say to you,
there are some standing here who will not taste death
until they see that the Kingdom of God has come in power.”
Readings from the Jerusalem Bible
First reading James 2:14 – 26
Take the case, my brothers, of someone who has never done a single good act but claims that he has faith. Will that faith save him? If one of the brothers or one of the sisters is in need of clothes and has not enough food to live on, and one of you says to them, ‘I wish you well; keep yourself warm and eat plenty’, without giving them these bare necessities of life, then what good is that? Faith is like that: if good works do not go with it, it is quite dead.
This is the way to talk to people of that kind: ‘You say you have faith and I have good deeds; I will prove to you that I have faith by showing you my good deeds – now you prove to me that you have faith without any good deeds to show. You believe in the one God – that is creditable enough, but the demons have the same belief, and they tremble with fear. Do realize, you senseless man, that faith without good deeds is useless. You surely know that Abraham our father was justified by his deed, because he offered his son Isaac on the altar? There you see it: faith and deeds were working together; his faith became perfect by what he did. This is what scripture really means when it says: Abraham put his faith in God, and this was counted as making him justified; and that is why he was called ‘the friend of God.’
You see now that it is by doing something good, and not only by believing, that a man is justified. A body dies when it is separated from the spirit, and in the same way faith is dead if it is separated from good deeds.
Psalm: Psalm 111(112):1-6
Happy the man who takes delight in the commands of the Lord.
Happy the man who fears the Lord,
who takes delight in all his commands.
His sons will be powerful on earth;
the children of the upright are blessed.
Happy the man who takes delight in the commands of the Lord.
Riches and wealth are in his house;
his justice stands firm for ever.
He is a light in the darkness for the upright:
he is generous, merciful and just.
Happy the man who takes delight in the commands of the Lord.
The good man takes pity and lends,
he conducts his affairs with honour.
The just man will never waver:
he will be remembered for ever.
Happy the man who takes delight in the commands of the Lord.
Gospel Mark 8:34 - 9:1
Jesus called the people and his disciples to him and said, ‘If anyone wants to be a follower of mine, let him renounce himself and take up his cross and follow me. For anyone who wants to save his life will lose it; but anyone who loses his life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. What gain, then, is it for a man to win the whole world and ruin his life? And indeed what can a man offer in exchange for his life? For if anyone in this adulterous and sinful generation is ashamed of me and of my words, the Son of Man will also be ashamed of him when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.’ And he said to them, ‘I tell you solemnly, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the kingdom of God come with power.’
Readings and Commentary from the Navarre Bible
Friday of the 6th Week in Ordinary Time
From: James 2:14-24, 26
Faith Without Good Works Is Dead
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[14] What does it profit, my brethren, if a man says he has faith but has not works? Can this faith save him? [15] If a brother or sister is ill-clad and in lack of daily food, [16] and one of you says to them, "Go in peace, be warmed and filled," without giving them the things needed for the body, what does it profit? [17] So faith, by itself, if it has no works, is dead.
[18] But some one will say, "You have faith and I have works." Show me your faith apart from your works, and I by my works will show you my faith. [19] You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe--and shudder.
Examples from the Bible
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[20] Do you want to be shown, you foolish fellow, that faith apart from works is barren? [21] Was not Abraham our father justified by works, when he offered his son Isaac upon the altar? [22] You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was completed by works, [23] and the scripture was fulfilled which says, "Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness"; and he was called the friend of God. [24] You see that a man is justified by works and not by faith alone. [26] For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so faith apart from works is dead.
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Commentary:
14-26. This passage forms the core of the letter. The sapiential method (often used in the Old Testament) and pedagogical style of the passage help to engrave the message on the readers' minds: unless faith is accompanied by works, it is barren, dead. This basic message, with different variances, is stated up to five times (verses 14, 17, 18, 20, 26), in a cyclical, repetitive way.
The initial rhetorical question (verse 14) and the simple, vivid example of a person who is content with giving good advice to someone in urgent need of the bare essentials (verses 15-16), catch the disciples' attention and predispose them to accept the core message, which is couched in the form of a sapiential maxim (verse 17).
The narrative retains its conventional tone, with a series of questions; we are given three examples of faith: firstly (a negative example), the faith of demons, which is of no avail (verses 18-19); contrasting with this, the faith of Abraham, the model and father of believers (verses 20-23); and finally, the faith of a sinner whose actions won her salvation, Rabah, the prostitute (verses 24-25). The last sentence once again repeats the essential idea: "faith apart from works is dead" (verse 26).
14. This teaching is perfectly in line with that of the Master: "Not every one who says to Me, `Lord, Lord', shall enter the Kingdom of Heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in Heaven" (Matthew 7:21).
A faith without deeds cannot obtain salvation: "Even though incorporated into the Church, one who does not however persevere in charity is not saved. He remains indeed in the bosom of the Church, but `in body' not `in heart'. All children of the Church should nevertheless remember that their exalted condition results not from their own merits but from the grace of Christ. If they fail to respond in thought, word, and deed to that grace, not only shall they not be saved, but they shall be the more severely judged" (Vatican II, "Lumen Gentium", 14).
In the Christian life, therefore, there needs to be complete consistency between the faith we profess and the deeds we do. "Unity of life", one of the key features of the spirituality of Opus Dei, tries to counter the danger of people leading a double life, "on the one hand, an inner life, a life related to God; and on the other, as something separate and distinct, their professional, social and family lives, made up of small earthly realities [...]. There is only one life, made of flesh and spirit. And it is that life which has to become, in both body and soul, holy and filled with God: we discover the invisible God in the most visible and material things" (St. J. Escriva, "In Love with the Church", 52).
15-16. This very graphic example is similar to that in the First Letter of St. John: "If any one has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him?" (1 John 3:17); and the conclusion is also along the same lines: "Little children, let us not love in word or speech but in deed and in truth" (1 John 3:18). St. Paul gives the same teaching: "the Kingdom of God does not consist in talk but in power" (1 Corinthians 4:20). Actions, works, measure the genuineness of the Christian life; they show whether our faith and charity are real.
Almsgiving, for example, so often praised and recommended in Scripture (cf., e.g., Deuteronomy 15:11; Tobias 4:7-11; Luke 12:33; Acts 9:36; 2 Corinthians 8: 9), is very often a duty. Christ "will count a kindness done or refused to the poor as done or refused to Himself [...]. Whoever has received from the divine bounty a large share of temporal blessings whether they be external or material, or gifts of the mind, has received them for the purpose of using them for the perfecting of his own nature, and, at the same time, that he may employ them, as the steward of God's providence, for the benefit of others" (Leo XIII, "Rerum Novarum", 24).
17. As well as involving firm adherence to revealed truth, faith must influence a Christian's ordinary life and be a standard against which he measures his conduct. When one's works are not in accordance with one's beliefs, then one's faith is dead.
Christian teaching also describes as "dead faith" the faith of a person in mortal sin: because he is not in the grace of God he does not have charity, which is as it were the soul of all the other virtues. "Faith without hope and charity neither perfectly unites a man with Christ nor makes him a living member of His body. Therefore it is said most truly that `faith apart from works is dead' (James 2:17ff) and useless" (Council of Trent, "De Iustificatione", 7).
18. The Apostle makes it crystal clear that faith without work makes no sense at all. "The truth of faith includes not only inner belief, but also outward profession, which is expressed not only by declaration of one's belief, but also by the actions by which a person shows that he has faith" (St. Thomas, "Summa Theologiae", II-II, q. 124, a. 5).
19. St. James goes as far as to compare a faith without works with the kind of faith devils have, for they do believe: they are forced to believe by the evidence of the signs (miracles and prophecies, for example) which support Christian teaching (cf. "Summa Theologiae", II-II, q. 5, a. 2). However, that faith is not saving faith; on the contrary, it causes them to cringe by reminding them of divine justice and eternal punishment.
Commenting on this verse, St. Bede says that it is one thing to believe God, another thing to believe in God, and another to believe "towards" God ("credere in illum"). "Believing Him is believing that what He says is true. Believing in Him is believing that He is God. Believing `towards' Him is loving Him. Many people, even bad people, believe that God tells the truth; they believe it is the truth and they do not want to, are too lazy to, follow the way truth points. Believing that He is God is something the devils are able to do. But believing and tending towards Him is true only of those who love God, who are Christians not in name only but whose actions and lives prove them to be so. For without love faith is of no avail. With love, it is the faith of a Christian; without love, it is the faith of the devil" ("Super Iac. Expositio, ad loc.").
20-26. The original addressees of the letter (Christians of Jewish background steeped in Scripture) would have been very familiar with the two examples from the Old Testament (Abraham and Rahab).
The patriarch Abraham is a model of faith (cf. especially Hebrews 11:8ff). St. James highlights the fact that his faith was manifested in deeds (verse 22), so much so that he was ready to sacrifice his own son when God, to test him, asked him to do so (cf. Genesis 22:1ff). The text of Genesis 15:6 quoted here (verse 23) is also used by St. Paul in his polemic against the Judaizers, to show that "first justification" comes from faith and not from works of the Mosaic Law (cf. Romans 4:1-25; Galatians 3:6-9); that is, Abraham was justified from the very moment he believed in God; his works would not have any value without that direct reference to God. In Abraham, as in every Christian who acts consistently, faith and works totally imbue each other: works show forth faith, and faith inspires and performs works (verses 22, 24).
The story of Rahab (verse 25) is told in the Book of Joshua (2:1-21; 6:17-25): this woman, who was living among the Canaanites, saved the lives of two Israelite spies whom Joshua had sent into Jericho, and for this reason she and her family were saved when the Israelites took the city. Her actions showed her faith (cf. Joshua 2:9-14; Hebrews 11:31), and led not only to her coming out unscathed and becoming a member of the people of Israel; it also won her the honor of being one of the four foreign women mentioned in the Gospel in our Lord's ancestral tree (cf. Matthew 1:5).
These two examples clearly show that God calls all men to believe and that all can and should manifest their faith by exemplary living.
22-24. The Magisterium of the Church quotes these verses when it teaches that justification, righteousness, received as a free gift in the Sacrament of Baptism, grows in strength as the Christian responds to grace by keeping the commandments of God and of the Church; the righteous, the just, "increase in the very justice which they have received through the grace of Christ, their faith is completed by works (cf. James 2:22), and they are justified the more, as it is written, `Let the righteous still do right' (Revelation 22:11), [...] and again: `You see that a man is justified by works and not by faith alone (James 2:24)" (Council of Trent, "De Iustificatione", 10).
23. "It was reckoned to him as righteousness": St. Paul (cf. Galatians 3:6 and
note) uses these words of Genesis 15:6 to explain that righteousness is attained not just by Abraham's descendants but by all who believe the word of God, whether they be Jews or not; St. James, from another perspective, quotes this text to show that Abraham's faith made him righteous, that is, holy. Both teachings are complementary. Abraham believed in the divine promise that he would be the father of a great people despite his age and his wife's sterility; but that faith was reinforced and manifested when it met the test God set--that of sacrificing his only son, while still believing in the earlier promise. The same thing happens in the case of the Christian: his initial faith is strengthened by obedience to the commandments, and he thereby attains holiness.
"The friend of God": Scripture also gives this touching title to Abraham (cf. Isaiah 41:8; Daniel 3:35, New Vulgate) and our Lord uses it to describe His Apostles: "I have called you friends" (John 15:15). These are not just isolated examples, for God calls all to be His friends; He wishes to be as intimate with everyone as He was with Abraham and the Apostles: "We do not exist in order to pursue just any happiness. We have been called to penetrate the intimacy of God's own life, to know and love God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, and to love also--in that same love of the one God in three divine Persons--the angels and all men" (St. J. Escriva, "Christ Is Passing By", 133).
26. In speaking of "the spirit" St. James is referring to the "breathe of life", "breathing". The comparison (like all those in the letter) is very graphic: we recognize a body to be alive by its breathing: if it is not breathing it is a corpse; similarly, a faith that is alive expresses itself in actions, especially in the acts of charity.
"Just as when a body moves we know it is alive," St. Bernard explains, "so too good works show that faith is alive. The soul gives life to the body, causing it to move and feel; charity gives life to faith, causing it to act, as the Apostle says, `faith working through love' (Galatians 5:6). Just as the body dies when its soul leaves it, so faith dies when charity grows cold. Therefore, when you see someone who is active in good works and happy and eager in his conduct, you can be sure that faith is alive in him: his life clearly proves it to be so" ("Second Sermon on the Holy Day of Easter", 1).
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From: Mark 8:34-9:1
Christian Renunciation (Continuation)
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[34] And He (Jesus) called to Him the multitude with His disciples, and said to them, "If any man would come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me. [35] For whoever would save his life will lose it; and whoever loses his life for My sake and the Gospel's will save it. [36] For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his life? [37] For what can a man give in return for his life? [38] For whoever is ashamed of Me and of My words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of Man also be ashamed, when He comes in the glory of His Father with the holy angels".
[1] And He said to them, "Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the Kingdom of God come with power."
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Commentary:
35. "Life": in the original text and the New Vulgate the word literally means "soul." But here, as in many other cases, "soul" and "life" are equivalent. The word "life" is used, clearly, in a double sense: earthly life and eternal life, the life of man here on earth and man's eternal happiness in Heaven. Death can put an end to earthly life, but it cannot destroy eternal life (cf. Matthew 10:28), the life which can only be given by Him who brings the dead back to life.
Understood in this way, we can grasp the paradoxical meaning of our Lord's phrase: whoever wishes to save his (earthly) life will lose his (eternal) life. But whoever loses his (earthly) life for Me and the Gospel, will save his (eternal) life. What, then, does saving one's (earthly) life mean? It means living this life as if there were no other -- letting oneself be controlled by the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life (cf. 1 John 2:16). And losing one's (earthly) life means mortifying, by continuous ascetical effort, this triple concupiscence --that is, taking up one's cross (verse 34)--and consequently seeking and savoring the things that are God's and not the things of the earth (cf. Colossians 3:1-2).
36-37. Jesus promises eternal life to those who are willing to lose earthly life for His sake. He has given us example: He is the Good Shepherd who lays down His life for His sheep (John 10:15); and He fulfilled in His own case what He said to the Apostles on the night before He died: "Greater love has no man than this that a man lay down his life for his friends" (John 15:13).
38. Each person's eternal destiny will be decided by Christ. He is the Judge who will come to judge the living and the dead (Matthew 16:27). The sentence will depend on how faithful each has been in keeping the Lord's commandments – to love God and to love one's neighbor, for God's sake. On that day Christ will not recognize as His disciple anyone who is ashamed to imitate Jesus' humility and example and follow the precepts of the Gospel for fear of displeasing the world or worldly people: he has failed to confess by his life the faith which he claims to hold. A Christian, then, should never be ashamed of the Gospel (Romans 1:16); he should never let himself be drawn away by the worldliness around him; rather he should exercise a decisive influence on his environment, counting on the help of God's grace. The first Christians changed the ancient pagan world. God's arm has not grown shorter since their time (cf. Isaiah 59:1). Cf. Matthew 10:32-33 and note on same.
9:1. The coming of the Kingdom of God with power does not seem to refer to the second, glorious coming of Jesus at the end of time (the Parousia); it may, rather, indicate the amazing spread of the Church in the lifetime of the Apostles. Many of those present here will witness this. The growth and spread of the Church in the world can be explained only by the divine power God gives to the mystical body of Christ. The Transfiguration of our Lord, which is recounted in the next passage, is a sign, given to the Apostles, of Jesus' divinity and of the divine powers which He will give His Church.
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Source: "The Navarre Bible: Text and Commentaries". Biblical text from the Revised Standard Version and New Vulgate. Commentaries by members of the Faculty of Theology, University of Navarre, Spain.
Published by Four Courts Press, Kill Lane, Blackrock, Co. Dublin, Ireland, and by Scepter Publishers in the United States. We encourage readers to purchase The Navarre Bible for personal study. See Scepter Publishers for details.
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