Dei via est íntegra
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Catholic Mass, Doctrine, and Moral Teaching -- Don't do without them --
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Apropos A homily of St. Augustine on Matthew xxv: 31-46. Some would say that by faith alone - which, remember, without works is
lifeless - you can gain eternal life, even if you fail to keep the commandments.
But how can this be reconciled with what our Lord is going to tell those whom He
sets off to the left, "Go into the everlasting fire which was prepared for
the devil and his angels," and with His reason for condemning them, not any
want of belief in Him but their failure to do good works? He wanted to make sure
that no one would expect to win eternal life by faith alone, which is dead
without works. That was why He said that He was going to make a separation among
the people of all the nations, who had been using the same pastures without
distinction. This separation will make it clear that those who say to Him,
"Lord, when did we see you suffering this or that and did not minister to
You?" will be those who had believed in Him, but had not taken care to
perform good works, as if they were going to attain everlasting life by dead
faith alone.
Do you think that those who fail to perform works of mercy will be the only
ones going to hell? What about those who steal what belongs to others? Or what
about those who show themselves no mercy in so far as they corrupt the temple of
God within them? Can works of mercy be of any use without love? The Apostle
says, "If I distribute all my goods to the poor, yet do not have charity,
it profits me nothing." No one, remember, can love his neighbor as himself
if he does not love himself. And "he who loves evil hates his own
soul."
There is no point in deceiving ourselves, as some do, by saying that the
Gospel speaks of an everlasting fire, but not of an everlasting burning. These
people consider a dead faith sufficient grounds for promising salvation to
certain persons "through fire"; and they interpret these words of
St. Paul as meaning that those persons are going to pass through the fire,
which itself will be eternal. In other words, the fire itself would be
everlasting, but the fire's burning, that is, its actions on those persons would
not last forever. But the Lord forestalled such an interpretation by concluding
His verdict with the words: "And these will go into everlasting burning,
but the just into everlasting life. The burning, then, just as the fire, will be
everlasting. And Truth Himself tells us that it will not be those whose faith is
lacking who will go into it, but those whom He has found wanting in good works.
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