Please read the passage before the homily:
When you pay someone to work for you, you give the person something owed to the person. When you give a present to someone on a birthday or at Christmas, the gift is not owed to the person, but is accredited to the position that the person has with the giver. In Paul’s terminology, it is accredited as righteousness, not as something owed to the person.
Abraham was called righteous before he was circumcised. He was called righteous before his circumcision. Psalm 32 calls blessed those “whose sins are forgiveness and whose sins are blotted out”. It is God’s doing that our sins are forgiven, not because of anything we have done.
It was God’s mercy that called Abraham into a positive relationship with God. It was God’s generosity and mercy that joined the Israelite people into the positive relationship that we call righteousness with God. It was the same mercy that sent the Lord Jesus to be our Savior. It is the same mercy of God that has called us into the right relationship that we call justification.
There is, therefore, no room for pride, boasting or considering oneself superior or inferior to others. We are all saved the same way, by the generous and gracious love of God who has associated us to himself.
To the Romans this could be a persuasive argument for accepting Paul as a legitimate apostle to them. It can also be a persuasive argument for accepting each other in the Lord. Paul would phrase it as Jew first, in time but not in effect, and Greek later, that is, on an equal basis.
What about our good deeds, our acts of righteousness? We do them, not to get paid, but to give thanks to God for all the benefits and blessings we have received from the righteousness God has shared with us.