Homily for Thursday
28th Week of Ordinary Time
Oct. 16, 2025
Rom 3: 21-30
Christian Brothers, St. Joseph Residence,
N.R.
Moses with the 10 Commandments
(Philippe de Champaigne)
“The righteousness of God has been
manifested apart from the law” (Rom 3: 21).
Paul addresses humanity’s ultimate
question: how do we establish and
maintain a right relationship with God?
How are we justified, i.e., made just or made holy?
The 1st way I posed that question is
false. The 2d is true. We can’t establish a right
relationship with God, i.e., it’s beyond our power. No one can keep the law perfectly. No one is just; everyone’s a sinner. We’re all on the outs with God and deserve
condemnation.
Instead, God has “freely justified [human
beings] by his grace thru redemption in Christ Jesus” (3:24). God has issued an executive pardon, sealed by
the blood of Christ (3:25). He forgives;
not only forgives, but even makes people holy.
God’s righteousness is so great in itself that it “justifies the one who
has faith in Jesus” (3:26). God shares
his own holiness with us thru our relationship with Christ. What matters, we could say, almost
flippantly, isn’t what we know—the law—but whom we know: Jesus.
The forgiveness of sins is an act of grace or of mercy, not something
we’ve earned.
Something St. Augustine preached is apropos: “It’s not as if a good life of some sort came
first, and that thereupon God showed his love and esteem for it from on high,
saying: ‘Let’s come to the aid of these people and assist them quickly because
they’re living a good life.’ No, our
life was displeasing to him; whatever we did by ourselves was displeasing to
him; but what he did in us was not displeasing to him. He will, therefore, condemn what we’ve done,
but he’ll save what he himself has done in us.”[1]
In our Eucharist, then, we thank God for
what he’s done and continues to do in us thru his Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.
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