God works in you both to will and to do.

By Prof. Dr. Daniel C. Afonso · Updated 8 October 2026

Deus est enim, qui operatur in vobis et velle, et perficere pro bona voluntate.
Fl 2,13

The memory of Saint Charles Borromeo collects today two pages that seem to pull the soul in opposite directions, yet they sustain each other. The Letter to the Philippians commands us to work out our salvation with fear and trembling, and the Gospel of Luke demands that we renounce everything we possess. The Psalm 26 (27) places between them the faithful’s only plea, Unam petii a Domino, “I have asked one thing from the Lord” (Ps 26,4), which is to dwell in the Lord’s house. The liturgy does not juxtapose these readings by chance. It teaches that effort and renunciation are not the price of grace but its visible fruit.

I. The fear and trembling of those already saved

The Pauline command can only be understood when we do not separate it from the reason that underlies it. Paul writes:

cum metu et tremore vestram salutem operamini“Work out your salvation with fear and trembling” (Philippians 2:12), and immediately dispel any Pelagian reading with the causal conjunction of the following verse.Deus est enim, qui operatur in vobis et velle, et perficere

“For it is God who works in you, both to will and to do according to his good pleasure” (Phil 2:13). The fear of which the Apostle speaks is not the distress of a slave before an uncertain master. It is the reverent tremor of the creature who feels God working within him and dares not contradict that operation. Salvation is not achieved, it is responded to.

The image Paul chooses for the community is astronomical and luminous. The Philippians must be…

filii Dei, sine reprehensione in medio nationis pravæ et perversæ“as flawless children of God in the midst of a depraved and perverse generation” (Phil 2:15), and in her to shine forthsicut luminaria in mundo

In the passage, three things are asked of the faithful, and it is worth distinguishing them. To obey without murmuring, to preserve the word of life, and to rejoice even in the libation of the sacrifice. The verb in verse 16, verbum vitæ continentes, “preserving the word of life,” has a density that Portuguese dilutes. Continere means to retain, to guard, to embrace interiorly. The faithful do not merely hear the word; they contain it like a vessel contains what overflows from it.

II. Sitting Down First and Calculating Expenses

The Gospel of Luke presents to the crowds a demand that dissipates easy enthusiasm. Great multitudes followed Jesus, and it is precisely to them, at the height of their number, that He turns to say:Si quis venit ad me, et non odit patrem suum, et matrem

“Whoever comes to me and does not hate his father and mother cannot be my disciple” (Lk 14:26). The verb odit translates the Semiticism that does not mean affective aversion, but absolute preference. To love Christ is not to cease loving one’s parents, but to love them now within a greater love that relativizes them to all. Whoever does not carry his own cross, non potest meus esse discipulus, “cannot be my disciple” (Lk 14:27), is a refrain that Luke repeats three times like a hammer on the same anvil.

The two identical parables of the builder and the king explain why the demand is radical and not impulsive. The man who builds a tower prius sedens computat sumptus, “sits down first and calculates the expenses” (Lk 14:28), lest he leave the foundation unfinished and become the object of ridicule. The king who goes to war first examines whether ten thousand men can face twenty thousand. Christ does not invite to a blind renunciation, but to a lucid one. Only he who sits down first to count what he has can abandon everything. The conclusion of verse 33,

qui non renuntiat omnibus quæ possidet

One who does not renounce all that he has, is not acting on a whim. It is the result of a calculation made whole.

III. The grace that operates and the labor that responds

The tension between the two readings is resolved precisely where theology of grace becomes concrete. Paul says that God operates within us to will and to do. Luke says that we must renounce everything and carry the cross. These two statements do not compete, but articulate. The labor that Paul demands is possible precisely because God precedes and sustains it, and the renunciation that Luke asks for is the historical form that this labor takes on when it encounters parents, possessions, and even one’s own life.

Augustine formulated the formula that the liturgy illustrates today.qui fecit te sine te, non iustificat te sine te

“He who has made you without you does not justify you without you.” Human cooperation adds nothing to grace; it is grace itself made into action in time.

The responsorial psalm serves as a hinge between Paul’s fear and the evangelical calculation. The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom shall I fear? (Ps 26:1). Here is the secret that reconciles fear and trembling with peace. The believer trembles before the divine action and yet fears nothing, because he who acts upon him is his light. The sacrifice mentioned by Paul in verse 17, if I am poured out as a sacrifice, finds its serenity in the psalm. To be poured out is not to be lost. It is to dwell in the Lord’s house for all the days of one’s life.

IV. Mary, the perfect calculation of renunciation

The Virgin is the creature in whom these two readings coincide perfectly. Neither mentions her, yet both describe her. When Paul asks for children of God without reproach (Phil 2:15), tradition recognizes in the Immaculate One the only one who was so from the first moment, one in whom God’s will and its fulfillment operated without the slightest resistance from her will. The “fiat” of Nazareth is the perfect model of labor in fear and trembling, because Mary was disturbed before the angel’s greeting and, trembling, she submitted. She worked out her salvation not against grace, but entirely within it.

Mary is also the fulfillment of the two parables that Luke places at the heart of the Gospel. She is the one who sat down first and calculated the expenses, and thus was able to renounce everything. At the foot of the cross, Stabat Mater, the Virgin carries the cross that Christ asked of every disciple, and she carries it without the unfinished foundation of the imprudent builder. If Paul says, the word of life (Phil 2:16), Mary is the one who kept the Word of life not in figure but in flesh, first in her womb and then in her heart that held everything. Whoever wants to learn to renounce everything should look at one who kept nothing for herself. In her, fear became peace, calculation became a gift, and renunciation became the fullness of one who has God because he has left everything else.