How to Train the Will So That in All Its Works, Both Inward and Outward, It Seeks as Its Final End Nothing but the Pleasing of God

Besides the disciplinary training of your mind, you must also govern your will in such a way as not to allow it to incline toward its own desires, but rather to lead it toward being entirely one with the will of God. And in this, keep firmly in mind that it is not sufficient for you merely to desire and to seek always what is pleasing to God; you must also desire this as one moved by God himself, and for the sole purpose of pleasing him from a pure heart. For the sake of standing firm in such a purpose, we must endure a more intense struggle with our nature than in all that has been discussed above. For our nature is so inclined toward pleasing itself that in all its works, even the most virtuous and spiritual, it seeks its own rest and gratification, feeding on this secretly and imperceptibly, as on nourishment.

From this it comes about that when spiritual works lie before us, we at once desire and hasten toward them—yet not as those moved by the will of God, nor with the sole purpose of pleasing God, but rather for the sake of the consolation and joy that arises in us when we desire and seek what God wills of us. Such a delusion is the more hidden and concealed, the more lofty and spiritual is the thing we desire. This is why I say that we must not be content merely with desiring what God wills, but must also desire it in the manner, at the time, for the reason, and with the purpose that he wills it. The Apostle commands us to discern the will of God—not only as good, but as pleasing and perfect in every circumstance—when he says: ”Do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and pleasing and perfect” (Rom. 12:2). For if an act is deficient in even a single circumstance, or if we perform it not with full resolve and with all our strength, it is plainly imperfect both in fact and in name. Conclude from this that even when we desire and seek God himself, there can be room in this very act for certain irregularities and omissions—that a kind of flattery of our self-love can creep into it—since we often have in view our own benefit for ourselves rather than the will of God for God’s own sake. He is well pleased only by works done entirely for his glory, and he wills that we love him alone, desire him alone, and serve him alone.

Therefore, if you, my brother, desire to guard yourself against such hidden obstacles on the path to perfection; if you desire to establish yourself successfully in that disposition of soul whereby you will desire and do all things only because God wills it, only for his glory and for his good pleasure, and to serve him alone—who wills that in each of our deeds and each of our thoughts he alone should be both the beginning and the end—then proceed as follows.

When some act lies before you that is in accord with God’s will, or that is good in itself, do not at once incline your will toward it or desire it until you have first lifted your mind to God, to discern that it is the direct will of God that you should desire and perform such acts, and that they are pleasing to him. And when you have so composed your thoughts that the bending of your will is determined by the very will of God, then desire it and perform it for this reason—that God wills it—for the sole purpose of pleasing him, and for his glory alone.

Likewise, when you wish to turn away from something that is contrary to the will of God or is not good, do not immediately recoil from it; but first fix the eye of your mind upon the will of God and make clear to yourself that it is the direct will of God that you should turn away from this for the sake of pleasing him. For the deception of our nature is extremely subtle and is discerned by few: it secretly seeks only its own, while outwardly it conducts itself in such a way that it appears to us as if its sole purpose is to please God—which in reality is simply not so.

Thus it often happens that when we desire or refuse something entirely for ourselves, for our own gratification, we think we desire or refuse it solely in order to please God. The exclusive remedy for avoiding such self-delusion is purity of heart, which consists in putting off the old man and putting on the new. Toward this, the entire unseen warfare is directed.

Do you wish to learn the art of how to do this? Then listen. At the outset of every act you must, as far as possible, strip yourself of every personal desire, and choose neither to do nor to avoid the act until you have first felt that what moves and impels you to it is solely the consciousness of God’s will. If in all your outward acts, and especially your inward and spiritual ones, you cannot always actually feel this movement from God, be content with its possibility in you—that is, always maintain a sincere disposition to have no aim in any act whatsoever other than the sole pleasing of God.

To actually feel the movement from God toward an act comes about either through divine illumination—that is, intellectual radiance in which the will of God is revealed contemplatively to pure hearts—or through an inward inspiration of God, by a kind of inner word; or through other workings of God’s grace operative in a pure heart: a life-giving warmth, an inexpressible joy, spiritual exultations, compunction, tears of the heart, divine love, and other godloving and blessed feelings that come not by our own will but from God—not as our own activity, but as something we receive. By all such feelings we are assured that what we seek to do is in accordance with God’s will. Before all else, we must offer to God the warmest and purest prayer, beseeching him fervently once, twice, and many times to enlighten our darkness and grant us understanding. “Pray three times,” say the great elders Barsanuphius and John, “and then do whatever your heart inclines toward.” One must not forget, moreover, that alongside all the enumerated inward spiritual movements, the decisions that take shape within you must be verified by the counsel and discernment of those more experienced.

With regard to works whose performance must continue either always or for a greater or lesser length of time: not only at the very beginning of undertaking them must you have in your heart a sincere resolve to labor in them solely for the pleasing of God, but afterward, up to the very end, you must frequently renew such a disposition. For if you do not do so, you will be in danger of being once more ensnared in the bonds of natural self-love, which, inclining more toward self-gratification than toward pleasing God, often succeeds over time in imperceptibly leading us away from our original good disposition and bringing us to a change of our first good intentions and purposes. This is why Gregory of Sinai wrote: “Every hour attend to the disposition of your will with careful discernment—to what it inclines: whether according to God, whether for the sake of good itself and for the benefit of the soul, that you are sitting in stillness, chanting, reading, praying, and engaging in other spiritual labors—lest otherwise you rob yourself without knowing it” (Greek Philokalia, ch. 19, p. 916).

Therefore, whoever does not attend carefully to this will, after beginning some work with the sole aim of pleasing the Lord, little by little imperceptibly introduce self-gratification into it as well, finding in it satisfaction for his own desires—to such a degree that he entirely forgets the will of God. And he becomes so strongly bound by the pleasure he takes in that work that if God himself hinders him from performing it—whether through illness, or through trials from people and demons, or by some other means—he grows inwardly agitated and not infrequently blames now one person, now another, for being an obstacle in what had become his favorite course of activity; or else he murmurs against God himself. This is a clear sign that their inward disposition is not of God, but has sprung from the corrupt and rotten root of self-love.

For one who is moved to acts by nothing other than the consciousness of God’s will in the matter and the single desire to please God through it, never desires one act more than another—though one of them may be lofty and great, and another lowly and insignificant—but holds an equal disposition of will toward both of them, since both are pleasing to God. Therefore such a person, whether performing something lofty and great or something lowly and insignificant, is equally at peace and content—because he is entirely embraced by his chief intention and chief aim: to be, always and in all his works, simply pleasing to God, whether in life or in death, as the Apostle also says: ”Therefore we make it our aim, whether at home or away, to be pleasing to him” (2 Cor. 5:9). For this reason, beloved, be always attentive to yourself and gathered inwardly, and strive in every way to direct your works toward this sole end.

If you are sometimes moved to some act by so inward an impulse of the soul as to avoid the torments of hell or to inherit paradise, you may also direct this inwardly toward your ultimate goal—to please God by walking in his will—since God wills that you enter paradise and not depart to hell.

This motive, or this aim—to please God—no one can fully comprehend what power and might it holds in our spiritual life. For let some act be in itself the most simple and the least of things, but when it is done solely for the pleasing of God and for his glory, it becomes incomparably more precious in the eyes of God than many other lofty, glorious, and magnificent acts performed without this aim. Therefore it is more pleasing to God to see you give one coin to a poor man with the sole purpose of pleasing his divine majesty, than if you were to strip yourself of all your possessions with some other aim—even the aim of gaining heavenly goods—though such an aim is good and desirable.

This inward labor that you must maintain in every act—the labor of directing your thoughts, feelings, and deeds to the single aim of pleasing God—will at first seem difficult to you, but will afterward become easy and natural, if, first, you engage continuously in such spiritual practice, and second, always rekindle within yourself the desire for God, sighing toward him with a living movement of the heart as toward the sole and most perfect good, worthy of being sought for his own sake, served, and loved above all else.

The more often this seeking of boundless good in God occurs in the consciousness, and the more deeply it penetrates into the feeling of the heart, the more frequently and more warmly will the said acts of our will be performed, and the sooner and more readily will there be formed in us the habit of doing every act out of love for the Lord alone and out of the single desire to please him who is most worthy of all love.