Someone went to confession and asked the priest to intercede to God for him, so that he would leave behind his sinful life. The priest promised him that he would pray. After a while, he went to confession again and complained that he was still sinning and that the priest’s prayers were of no use to him. After hearing his confession, the priest said to him, “Come and help me lift this.” (he pointed to a heavy object that was difficult to be carried by one person)
He grasped it from one side and the priest from the other, and the more the sinner pulled it up, the more the priest pushed it down:
-“How are we going to lift it this way?” asked the man.
-“Well, actually you are doing the same thing” answered the priest, “when I ask God to lift you up from your sins, you keep pulling yourself down.”
Our willingness to change is a determining factor in the process of sanctification. It is true that God sends us His grace and that it is His grace that does the work of sanctification, but it is also true that grace needs our cooperation.
We see this many times in the Gospel. While the Jews recognized Jesus’ power and great works, they still made excuses not to accept Him. The problem was not that Jesus’ actions were not enough to show that He was the Messiah, but the lack of willingness of the Jews to accept Jesus. Accepting Jesus meant accepting His teaching and accepting His teaching meant changing their way of life.
We do the same thing when we do not put the necessary means to cooperate with His grace in order to stop committing a certain sin, or to fight against our dominant defect (or maybe we put some means but not the effective means), or to renounce certain attachments or disordered affections. We ask God to help us to be a saint but on the other hand, we do not cooperate with Him in the work of our sanctification.
There is a principle, a golden principle I would call it, that says: “do everything as if holiness depends on you, knowing that everything depends on God.” The work of sanctification is a work of the grace of God since we are not able to perform any supernatural action on our own, however the grace of God does not work without our freedom and cooperation.
