Our free will searches only what is natural and makes it grow, thus it wants what God wants for us. When this happens, man unites within himself his will and God’s will, not through submission, but out of love, conforming his will with God’s one at the level of the most profound liberty. What God requires man is all that it helps him to develop and understand himself as a person and exploit all the powers and faculties bestowed on him. The man who is truly free says: ‘God, may your will be done!’

Of course, this right choice leading to the identification of our will with God's will is not a constant, not a choice that man decides once and for his whole life. It is a painful and arduous struggle of the human will against the inferior things, against the earthly and selfish things. The free will of man is a great power, but also an immense race. The power comes from God, and the race from the devil.

(Translated from Aleka Ritsou, Maxim Mărturisitor şi sfânt, traducere din limba greacă de Cristian Spătărelu, Editura Egumeniţa, Galaţi, 2015, p. 83)