Воля

I am a slave of my God, despite the fact that I have been given free will and reason to control the will. My will is free almost only in the choice of good and evil: in other respects it is protected from everywhere. I can wish! But my wish, meeting with the opposite will of other people, with the opposite direction of insurmountable circumstances, remains for the most part unfulfilled. I can wish for a lot, but my own weakness makes many of my wishes fruitless. He who has set his goal in life to fulfill the will of God, tries in detail and with accuracy to learn this all-holy will through the most careful study of the Holy Scriptures, especially the New Testament, through reading the patristic writings, through conversation and consultation with successful Christians, through fulfilling the Gospel commandments and outward behavior, both mind and heart... When a Christian begins to live according to the will of God, good, pleasing and perfect (see Rom. 12:2), or according to the commandments of the New Testament, then the fall and weakness of human nature are suddenly revealed to him 37. Weakness does not allow him to fulfill God’s commandments purely and holy, as God demands, and his fall resists, often with the greatest bitterness, the fulfillment of God’s commandments. It wants and demands that the fallen will and the fallen mind of man be fulfilled. The aspirations of this will and the ideas of this mind are clothed in all types of the most sublime truth and virtue. Knowledge of the internal struggle, exposure and discovery of the sin living inside, knowledge of its violent power over good wills and aspirations gives the Christian a correct concept of himself and of humanity. He sees the fall of humanity in himself, he sees from his own experiences the impossibility of emerging from this fall through his own efforts alone, he acquires true humility, begins to bring to God the warmest prayer for help and intercession from a contrite heart, to which God always listens. “Teach me to do Your will” (Ps. 142:10)! “Teach me Your statutes” (Ps. 119:12)! “Do not hide Your commandments from me” (Ps. 119:19)! “Strengthen me with Your words” (Ps. 119:28)! “Remove the way of unrighteousness from me and, according to Your law, have mercy on me” (Ps. 119:29)! Having learned from experience that God’s commandments are fulfilled only with the abundant assistance of God’s grace, and constantly asking for this assistance through prayer, a Christian cannot help but attribute all his good deeds to God’s grace. At the same time, he cannot help but recognize himself as a sinner. On the one hand, he learned through experience his own fall and inability to fulfill the will of God by his own strength alone, on the other hand, even in the very fulfillment of God’s commandments with the help of grace, he sees constant errors introduced by weakness and human fall. This can be clearly seen from the reviews of the Holy Apostle Paul about himself. In one of the letters he says: “I have labored more than all of them” (the apostles): not I, however, but the grace of God which is with me” (1 Cor. 15:10), and in another: “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the first” (1 Tim. 1:15). Such is God-loving righteousness! It is produced in a person by the Divine grace that has overshadowed him and pleases God with the deeds of God-given truth. A godly righteous man does not cease to recognize himself as a sinner not only because of his obvious sins, but also because of his natural truth, which is in a sad fall, mixed with evil, defiled by sinful admixture. Blessed is he who is righteous by the truth of God; his hope is centered in Christ, the source of his righteousness. Unhappy is the one who is satisfied with his own human truth: he does not need Christ, who proclaimed Himself: “I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance” (Matthew 9:13). Venerable Simeon the New Theologian. The chapters are active and theological. Ch. 4. Philokalia. Part 1. You might be interested in: