Our Gospel today puts a challenge before us, because if we are honest with ourselves, we know we have been those two sons, sometimes saying “no” to the Father’s requests and then later changing our mind, or telling Him “yes,” and never doing what it is He asks of us to do. In other words, it is a challenge to us to truly gauge how obedient we are to the Will of God, how resigned we are to His desires, despite our own.

That may sound a little complex or, at the very least, a little theological, but, think of it this way, God has created us, loves us and desires us to be with Him, and He constantly tries to lead us in that direction, by our lives and by the good choices that we make in our lives. In other words, we are constantly presented with choices in which we can show or deny that love for Him. It is what the philosophers and theologians would call free will, and the way I like to think about it, which I am sure it not new, is that the more we say: “yes” to Him, the more we undo the “no” of our first parents, of Adam and Eve.

Like I said, it may sound a little complex, but, as Christians this is the goal that we seek, this is what the saints constantly strived to do, to completely abandon themselves to what God wants despite our own wants.

Mary, as one who stands as one of the greatest saints, summarizes it well, when after being told that she would conceive and bear a Son, said, in all humility: “Be it done unto me according to your Will.” Or Jesus, Himself, in the Garden of Gethsemane: “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me, yet, not my will, but yours be done.”

This is why St. Paul, in our second reading today, says: “Have in you the same attitude that is also in Christ Jesus,” because, by doing so, we learn the essence of this beautiful and complex mystery, that by becoming more like Christ, we learn humility, and in humility we are able to accept those things, whether great or sorrowful, fair or unfair, that God desires in our lives.

Yet, it does not mean that like those two sons in our Gospel, we will not fight Him on it, it does not mean we will start completely desiring what God wants, that is why being a Christian is a challenge, and has been likened to everything from climbing a mountain to engaging in battle, to carrying a cross, because even though we want to believe that God knows what it right and good for us, we also want to tell Him what we think is better.

And, that is challenge, and it is no easy task, but that is what pray for, that is what we will pray in a little while, when we say: “Thy Will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven.”

Perhaps though, we can take solace that not even some of the saints had it figured out. In fact, St. Teresa of Avila, trying to grasp this mystery, summarizes it well, she says: “The will must be fully occupied in loving, but does not understand how it loves. If it understands, it does not understand how it understands, or at least, cannot comprehend anything of what it understands. I do not think that it understands at all, because, as I have said, it does not understand itself. Nor can I myself understand this.”

Yet, in the end, it is a lot simpler than we tend to make it, we try to do what God wants and live our lives that way, so that, we can say, with the same confidence of another great saint, St Therese of Liseux, whom I leave you with today: “In heaven, the good God will do all I wish, because I have never done my own will upon earth.”