Thus the thought has come to correct your life and morality. Having cast off procrastination, humble and lighten your flesh with physical ascetical struggle. Remove yourself from cares and distractions by ceasing your usual business and by solitude, and then, concentrating your attention on various salvific thoughts, force yourself to cast out all blindness, insensitivity and indolence by reasoning with yourself, or discussing with yourself, alternating this with prayer and placing yourself under the influence of such occasions as divine grace has chosen to act upon the souls of sinners.
Labor, force yourself, search--and you will find; knock and it will be opened to you. Do not relax and do not despair. But all the while remember that these labors only comprise the experience of our struggle to attract grace; they are not the grace itself, which we do not yet have. We have not yet acquired the main thing: grace-filled awakening. . . . Therefore do not content yourself with your efforts alone, as though they were what you were supposed to seek. This is a dangerous mistake! It is equally dangerous to think that there is a reward due for these labors, and grace should be automatically sent down to you. Absolutely not! This only prepares you to receive it, but the gift itself is entirely dependent upon the Giver. Thus, making assiduous use of all the prescribed methods, the seeker should go on, awaiting God's visitation, which, by the way, does not come with discernment, but when it comes no one will know from whence it came.
When this grace-filled awakening arrives, only then will real inner changes of life and morals begin. Without this you cannot expect any progress, only unsuccessful attempts. . . . Labor in expectancy and the hope of faith. Grace will come and arrange everything.
--The Path to Salvation, pp. 145-146, 147
Posted by Clifton at March 13, 2004 06:00 AM