The Venerable-Martyr Theodosia the Virgin.
Romans 2:14-29; Matthew 5:33-41.
Read Romans 2:14-29
Harris Rosen, a Jewish hotelier in Florida, looked upon Tangelo Park, a poor neighborhood, and did something simple. He did not form a committee to discuss poverty. He paid for preschool. He funded a parent support center. Then he promised full scholarships—college or vocational school—to any child who graduated from high school.
What followed was astonishing: graduation rates rose from about 30% to nearly 100%. Eventually, 83% of graduates completed at least a vocational program. Crime fell by 67%. Homeowners saw property values triple.
Now ask the hard question.
In God’s eyes, who is justified: Harris Rosen, never baptized, yet pouring out his wealth for strangers; or the baptized Christian who confesses Christ correctly, receives the sacraments properly, and refuses the good his conscience commands him to do?
That question pricks the conscience like a tack hidden on a chair.
It may sound as if baptism does not matter. That is false. Baptism is entrance into Christ’s death and resurrection. It is not a sentimental badge, but birth into the household of God.
Yet St. Paul would not let religious people hide behind holy signs while their hearts remained hard. In his day, many Jewish Christians could scarcely imagine righteousness apart from circumcision. Circumcision was ancient, commanded, sacred, and good. It was, for them, what baptism is for us. But Paul said the deeper matter was obedience from the heart: “Circumcision indeed is of value if you obey the law” (Romans 2:25). Again: “It is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law” (Romans 2:13).
The first Christians had to learn that the covenant sign could never excuse refusal of the covenant demand. Now we face the same terror. We may replace circumcision with Holy Mysteries, correct doctrine, proper jurisdiction, approved language, and religious identity.
All these things matter.
But none excuses lovelessness.
The baptized man who will not do the good before him is burying grace. And if the baptized block grace through sloth and self-satisfaction, God may find uninitiated strangers whose hands obey what their hearts already know: love one another.