Homily
for Tuesday
Week
28 of Ordinary Time
Oct. 13, 2026
Gal
5: 1-6
Christian
Brothers, St. Joseph Residence, N.R.
 |
| The Council of Jerusalem (timelessreporter.com) |
“You are trying to be justified by law; you have fallen from grace” (Gal 5: 4).
At the
so-called Council of Jerusalem, ca. 50 A.D., Paul, Barnabas, and some other
missionaries argued for the admission of Gentiles to the Christian community
directly, without their having to take on the Law of Moses as a condition of
faith and salvation. They won their
case, as Acts 15 details.
The
decision of the apostles and elders in council didn’t go down well with
everyone, as the controversy in Galatia and elsewhere demonstrates. We know from history that the authoritative decisions
of church councils aren’t universally accepted.
After the Council of Nicaea, the Arians remained strong and influential
for decades. After Vatican I, a group in
Germany, the Netherlands, and some other countries called the Old Catholics
rejected papal infallibility and split with Rome. Today we contend with groups that reject
Vatican II.
In
Galatians Paul has been trying to deal with so-called Judaizers, people who
disagreed with the decision of the Council of Jerusalem and with the Gospel
Paul has been preaching consistently ever since his conversion. Today he tells his flock that if they decide
to be circumcised, they’re bound to observe the entire Mosaic Law and to find
their justification—or righteousness or good standing before God—in their observance
of the Law.
Following
Christ, on the other hand, means one depends on grace—on God’s gracious
pardoning of our moral failures. Moral
failure is inevitable, we know. No one
perfectly keeps all the commands of the Law; most of us have a hard enuf time
with the 10 most basic commandments. We
need grace.
In one of
his sermons, St. Augustine writes:
“Happy are we if we do the deeds of which we have heard. . . . It is 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 us come to the aid of these men and assist them quickly because they are living a good life.’ No, our life was displeasing to him; whatever we did by ourselves was displeasing to him; whatever he did in us was not displeasing to him. He will, therefore, condemn what we have done, but he will save what he himself has done in us.”[1]
In last
Saturday’s text from Galatians, Paul taught that when we were baptized into
Christ, we clothed ourselves in him (3:27).
Our being clothed in Christ’s grace is what God sees and loves in us—the
image of his Son. Christ’s transforming
power in us renders us capable of doing good and pleasing the Father. We are saved by grace.
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