In this week’s Council of Catholic Men study, we continue our journey through Scripture with James chapter 2, reflecting on the call to reject partiality, uphold the “royal law” of loving our neighbor, and live the truth that faith without works is dead. We walk through the Douay-Rheims text and its footnotes, connect James’s teaching to Old and New Testament cross-references—from Leviticus, Deuteronomy, Proverbs, Sirach, and Genesis to the Gospels, Romans, Galatians, Hebrews, and 1 John—and consider Abraham and Rahab as living witnesses to the cooperation of faith and works. 

We then open St. Peter Canisius’s Large Catechism on the third article of the Creed—“conceived by the Holy Spirit”—to contemplate the Incarnation as the origin of our salvation and the form of our regeneration, drawing on passages from Matthew, Luke, John, Romans, Galatians, Titus, 1 Peter, and more. I close with a reading from St. Alphonsus de Liguori’s Victories of the Martyrs on Saints Peter, Dorotheus, and Gorgonius, whose steadfast witness challenges us to fidelity.