Very often we rely more on maps or signposts than on our own sense of direction, of whose unworthiness we have plenty of experience. When we follow the signposts we don’t have any sense of being imposed upon; rather do we welcome them as a great help, a fresh piece of information which we immediately proceed to make our own.
It would seem that grace diminishes freedom because it comes from the outside. But St Paul, in his Second Letter to the Corinthians (3:17), tells us: “where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.”
Life is a journey and in any journey, one encounters crossroads where choices have to be made. Once we stop making choices, we get stuck in one place. We stagnate. Only when we decide can we move on.
“We are in a sense our own parents, and we give birth to ourselves by our own free choice of what is good” (St Gregory of Nyssa, Sermon on Ecclesiastes).