A monk is a man who has freed his intellect from attachment to material things and by means of self-control, love, psalmody and prayer cleaves to God. (Maximos the Confessor)

I might seem as much a prisoner of the Reformation (or Augustine) as Maximos is indentured to the self-actualization of Hellenism. But this is unfair to each of us.

His rhetoric seems more extreme, but Maximos understands self-control, love, psalmody, and prayer as disciplines which better prepare us to cooperate with God. We do not save ourselves, but we can open ourselves to God's grace.

I can sometimes sound as if any spiritual discipline is self-centered delusion, yet I practice disciplines and find them efficacious.

The Eastern church perceives a spiritual synergy by which human free will seeks out God's will. St. John Cassian wrote,

And so the grace of God always co-operates with our will for its advantage, and in all things assists, protects, and defends it, in such a way as sometimes even to require and look for some efforts of good will from it that it may not appear to confer its gifts on one who is asleep or relaxed in sluggish ease, as it seeks opportunities to show that as the torpor of man's sluggishness is shaken off its bounty is not unreasonable, when it bestows it on account of some desire and efforts to gain it. And none the less does God's grace continue to be free grace while in return for some small and trivial efforts it bestows with priceless bounty such glory of immortality, and such gifts of eternal bliss.

It is not grace or works, one or the other. God seeks our partnership. We are given - every day and in every moment - the choice of accepting or rejecting the partnership.