Homily, 10-23-23; Monday of the 29th Week in Ordinary Time:
Abraham is our model of faith. Paul quotes from the Book of Genesis where it says of him: “Abram put his faith in the LORD, who attributed it to him as an act of righteousness.”
Because Abraham had great faith, he was credited with righteousness. It wasn’t the other way around. He didn’t have faith because he was righteous. He didn’t earn his faith. He accepted it as a gift from God.
St. Paul tells us that God intends that we too be credited with righteousness. And he tells us that we accomplish that, not by works, but by our faith. We are called to believe the Good News. St. Paul says that we will be credited with righteousness if we simply: “believe in the one who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead, who was handed over for our transgressions and was raised for our justification.”
So Abraham was credited with righteousness, and we will be too if we have great faith, but what is our understanding of righteousness? We can sometimes misinterpret righteousness to be some measure of excellence or goodness as it is often used in slang today. But that is not the true meaning. Merriam Webster states that righteous means: “acting in accord with divine or moral law.” And if we look at the Latin text, the word used can also be translated as justice. In the Douay Rheims translation, which is one of the earliest English translations of the Bible, the verse is: “Abram believed God, and it was reputed to him unto justice.”
Merriam Webster states that one of the definitions of justice is: “the quality of conforming to law.” So righteousness and justice have pretty much the same meaning. Righteousness is not an honor or a designation of excellence. It is an obligation to follow divine and moral law because of what we believe. We believe that Jesus died on the cross to redeem us because He loves us. We believe that the Father raised Him from the dead to justify us because He loves us. And if we truly believe these two facts, then we will be righteous. We will follow the obligation to live according to God’s laws not man’s laws.
Faith is the starting point, a gift we need to ask for ourselves and for others. We need to share our belief with others because if they do not know and believe in the love of God, they will not be righteous. They will not feel obligated to follow the commandments and the teachings of Christ and His Church. Our evangelization begins with the Kerygma, the Good News about Jesus and His love for us. It will lead to a desire to follow what He teaches.
I recently watched a video by Fr. John Ricardo. He summed up the Kerygma in four words: created, captured, rescued, and response. It’s a love story. God created us because He loves us and wanted to share His divinity with us. Satan attacked mankind, causing our fall, because he knew how much God loves us and was jealous. And God loves us so much that He sent His Son to suffer and die for us to rescue us. And, finally, if we truly believe how much God loves us, our response is to love Him and obey Him in return. We will have no choice but to be righteous.