Father George contradicts this for the Greeks and Greek and Catholic teaching seem to be in accord that the soul, until it is reunited with its glorified body, is not able to will in any sense that we know it here in this life...
How then does a Holy Soul in Purgatory make a decision to pray for people on earth when asked?
How do the Saints in Heaven make decisions and respond to our prayers if they cannot exercise their will? Is the Mother of God with her glorified body, and Elijah the Prophet with his body, the only people in Heaven able to exercise any will?
Any magisterial statements to back up these strange teachings? Who has taught you that souls after death are "not able to will in any sense that we know it here in this life"?
All kinds of statements that are judged to be true. It is a logical system of thought. What you are getting here are the conclusions. It would take a chapter to give you the whole thing and its history.
Apparently the Greeks "get it"...In fact the west "gets it" because of the Greeks. I don't think the Slavs missed the memo quite as profoundly as you have. In ANY event...it seems that there is an Orthodox teaching that you don't understand or that goes against your own personal logic. That does not mean that it cannot possibly be Orthodox. Father George is not talking out of thin air.
When I say that we will not be able to will IN ANY SENSE that we know it here in this life, I mean that when we will in this life, we will against concupiscence. That is quite different from the action of the will in life of the soul after it leaves the corruptible corpus behind.
Saints in Heaven can will only toward the good. If that were not the case they would not be saints in Heaven. Father Gyrus seems to have a handle on the freedom of the will and slavery to sin. Maybe you should ask him to talk about it here. Also nothing that is not perfectly good can exist in heaven. So there is not choice between good and evil in heaven.
People in hell would not be in hell had they not fully and firmly hardened their heart against the good. So theirs is another story.
People in purgation need only to endure the purgation in life after death, a purgation they refused to endure, or had not the opportunity to endure in this life.
We baptize babies who cannot fully accept grace on the promise of adults to assist the child later in the full acceptance of their baptismal grace. So why could then that not work the same way for a soul in purgation?
We don't presume that would indeed happen for a soul in hell...but we can hope.
When I listen to you in this particular discussion, I wonder at your peerless Catholic education. Somewhere you missed something...that other Orthodox confessions not one received but initiated in terms of their theology, and we continued in that tradition in terms of understanding life after death in those terms.
M.