My dear friends, I want to remind us all that we need to have faith accompanied by good works in order to be saved. We have to accept that it is only by the name of Jesus that anyone can be saved and it is by His death and resurrection that He brought salvation to the whole world. To have faith also means that we totally surrender to God so that what He wills is what we desire to be done in our lives; it means readiness to live by the rule of life that He gives to us in the Scriptures. To have faith is to submit to the teachings of the Scriptures alone, but that we also submit ourselves to the guidance of God through His Church to which He gave the authority to bind and loose, to teach the whole nations of the earth.
However, St. James tells us that it is not enough to have faith, it is necessary to accompany the faith with good works, because those are the proofs that we are trying to be like God our father who is so generous that He makes His sun to shine and His rain to fall on both the good and the bad alike. If you have faith that is not known or felt by anybody or seen in action in any way by your neigbour, it is a kind of faith that is between you and God alone. But faith which is between you and God alone is of no value to anyone else because it does not inspire anyone to faith; it does not inspire anyone to good action or generosity of any kind. You forget the saying that, ‘No one lives for himself alone.’
We live for God and for all God’s creatures. So dear friends, if you are generous and you give for the welfare of others, do not be discouraged by ingratitude or any other action that does not give you credit for whatever you have done. You must know that your heavenly father who sees what you have done both in secret and public will not fail to reward you richly. We must constantly call to mind the corporal and spiritual works of mercy, because these are the works that we do which show that we do not only have faith, but we have proof that we have faith in the works that we carry out.
• Most Rev. (Dr.) Alfred Adewale Martins, Catholic Archbishop of Lagos
