On Desire and Freedom

Also Christ says: Come to me all you who labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest. therefore no creature has ever cease using the inherent power that directs it towards its end, nor has it ceased the natural activity that impels it towards its end, nor harvested what it had anticipated. I am referring of course to being impassible and unmoved. For it belongs to God alone to be the end and completion and the impassible...It belongs to creatures to be moved toward that end which is without beginning, and to come to rest in the perfect end that is without end, and to experience that which is without definition, but not to be such or to become such in essence. For whatever comes into being and is created is certainly not absolute...It is important t understand correctly what is meant by passibility...for the passibility spoken of in this connection does not refer to change or corruption of ones power; passibility here indicates that which exists by nature in beings. For everything that comes into existence is subject to movement, since it is not self moved or self powered. If then rational beings come into being, surely they are also moved, since they move from a natural beginning in being toward a voluntary end in well-being itself, just as its beginning is being itself which is God who is the given of being as well as of well being...from him come both our moving in whatever way from a beginning and our moving in certain way toward him as an end.

If the intellectual being is moved intellectually in a way appropriate to itself, it certainly perceives. If it perceives, it certainly loves what it perceives. If it loves, it certainly experiences ecstasy over what is loved. If it experiences ecstasy, it presses on eagerly and it intensifies its motion; if its motion is intensified, it does not come to rest until it is embraced wholly by the object of desire. It no longer wants anything from itself, for it knows itself to be wholly embraced, and intentionally and by choice it wholly receives the lifegiving delimitation. When it is wholly embraced [by the Trinity] it no longer wishes to be embraced at all by itself but is suffused by that which embraces it. In the same way air is illuminated by light and iron is wholly inflamed by fire...what is being referred to is that subjection about which the divine apostle spoke, when the Son subjects to the Father those who accept subjection (1 cor 15:28)...

Do not be disturbed by what I have said. I have no intention of denying free will. Rather i am speaking of a firm and steadfast disposition...so that from the one from whom we have received being we long to receive being moved as well. It is like the relation between an image and its archetype. A seal conforms to the stamp against which it was pressed, and has neither desire nor capability to receive an impression from something else, or to put it forthrightly...it does not want to. Since it lays hold of God's power or rather becomes God by divinization and delights more in the displacement of those things perceived to be naturally its own...It is absolutely necessary that everything will cease its willful movement toward something else when the ultimate beauty that satisfies our desire appears."

--St. Maximus the Confessor Ambiguum 7.I pp.50-53