26th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year A

This Sunday's Gospel (Matthew 21: 28-32) presents us with the short but powerful Parable of the Two Sons. The first son, when asked to work in the vineyard, finally did his father's will. The second son---although he verbally agreed---did not.

Yves de Montcheuil, a French priest, theologian and chaplain to the free French of Vercors during the Second World War, was executed by the army of occupation in 1944. Having remained faithful to Christ in life and in death, Fr. de Montcheuil reveals the importance of being attentive to the will of God and the beauty in accomplishing it:

The kingdom is for each one of us the response to a personal call; it means clinging to the personal will of God which varies for each one and likewise varies according to our circumstance. God's plan seen from the human angle is not a law established once and for all but a will revealed gradually according the needs of the Church and our personal capabilities.

Indeed the kingdom is not a place where we can sit back and relax. We have to be always following Jesus without knowing beforehand where we are going, ready to discern what God is expecting of us now. We must, then, keep careful watch, wakeful, attentive, and yet peaceful, to discern this living and evolving will of God. His demands on us can make us grow; he can ask of us tomorrow what he did not ask yesterday and so these demands engage us constantly in new ways. We need to examine our motives in all we do in order to hold ourselves in readiness for God.