Readings:
1 Chronicles 4-6
Proverbs 31
James 2

James 2

James opens the second chapter with a warning against partiality. Remember that all are equal in Christ, slave or free, gentile or Jew, so we are to treat each fellow Christian as brother and not give preferential treatment to a rich man over a poor man. In fact, if we are to favor one over the other, it’s the opposite. The world honors wealth and despises the poor, but we are supposed to be different, we honor every person equally.

James states here what he then goes on to implicitly explain the rest of his letter, that Faith cannot be salvific apart from works. He is t teaching that we can work our way to salvation, but he is saying that the two, faith and works, go hand in hand.

Just as faith apart from works is dead, so works apart from faith are dead. If we have right doctrine but fail in right living, our doctrine is useless. So too, if we are careful about life but careless about doctrine, that will not benefit us either.

St. John Chrysostom

The faith we have in God is a gift and only possible through the workings and grace of the Holy Spirit, but we can’t let it stop just at belief, we have to put it into action. We have to cooperate with the graces God gives us in life and do what he tells us to do, that way we allow grace, working through faith, to save us.

Faith is an entirely free gift that God makes to man. We can lose this priceless gift, as St. Paul indicated to St. Timothy: “Wage the good warfare, holding faith and a good conscience. By rejecting conscience, certain persons have made shipwreck of their faith.” To live, grow and persevere in the faith until the end we must nourish it with the word of God; we must beg the Lord to increase our faith; it must be “working through charity,” abounding in hope, and rooted in the faith of the Church.

CCC 162

Faith alone is a faith that cannot save. The only place this phase, a favorite of the early “reformers” of the 16th century, appears in the Bible is when James says we are NOT saved by faith alone. You can’t work your way to heaven, but neither can you just have intellectual assent to the existence of God and the sacrifice of Christ, the demons are well aware of both, and yet are condemned.

See https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/faith-alone-is-not-enough for more.

Tomorrow’s Readings:
1 Chronicles 7-9
Sirach 1
James 3