What role do good works play in our salvation? - Catholic Answers

What role do good works play in our salvation? - Catholic Answers
(Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXIyJGD2qnU&ab_channel=CatholicAnswers)

[NOTE: All "uhs" and "ums" have been removed. Transcription thanks to GoTranscribe]

"Catherine in Winchester, Virginia on WHSW. You're up next on Catholic Live with Jimmy. Hi, Catherine."

"Hello."

"Hi, go ahead."

"I have a question regarding, the Salvation Controversy and Jimmy Aiken, I read your book. I feel as a Cradle Catholic, I never had a good sense of it. I thought that our good works win us our salvation. And so my question is, I'm trying to wrap my head around this, if Jesus' passion, death, and resurrection are sufficient for salvation, what then what role do our good works play?"

"Okay. Jesus', passion, death and resurrection are sufficient for our salvation. And they're so sufficient that one of the things they enable is God giving us, when he justifies us, the virtue of charity or supernatural love of God and neighbor. And when we have charity that enables us to do good works that are supernaturally pleasing to God, these are different. And this is something you see in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus talks about how if you love only those who love you, well don't even the pagans do that. You need to go beyond that and, and love even your enemies. And that's an example of a supernatural good work, loving even your enemies. And those kind of works, please God, and display the fact that we're sons of the Father, as Jesus says. And so those are things that grow out of our state of justification.

When God justifies us, he gives us that charity that makes these supernaturally good works possible, and he chooses to reward them. And in Romans 2, and particularly if you look at verses 6-7, he talks about how he even gives eternal life, in some sense, as a reward for working good. [That's] what Paul literally says there. And so, it's not that our good works earn salvation. They don't, because our good works are themselves a product of God's grace and of what Jesus did on the cross, but Scripture does use language that indicates that when we enter a state of justification, God pours his love into our hearts. And this enables us to do things that please God and that he will reward. And one of those rewards according to St. Paul is eternal life.

Now, if you don't have the opportunity to do such works, you know, let's say you, come to God and you're justified, and then you're immediately hit by a bus, well, you're justified. So you're gonna go to heaven and you will receive eternal life. But if you're then able to, to go on to live a life of charity and do the things that please God supernaturally, then you'll receive a supernatural reward and eternal life will at least take on the character of a reward, which it wouldn't have necessarily had if, you hadn't been able to do that."

"That's a lot, Catherine. There's a lot more. You can either, wait for the book to come out or look up Good Works or Works Salvation at catholic.com."

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