Steps on the Road to God – “The Goal” in the Spiritual Life
Steps on the Road to God
I speak to you about the goal in the spiritual life. What is our true goal? What are the false and temporary goals? And how does the right goal lead us into the depth of life with God.
“The Goal” in the Spiritual Life [1]
The goal determines a person’s path in life.
One who lives without a goal lives a disturbed life, without taste, without meaning. He is a person who merely spends days on earth, without fruit. Such a person may constantly ask: Why do we live? Why did God create us? What is the wisdom of our existence?
The life of such people is overtaken by boredom, weariness, and anxiety…
There are people who have temporary or short-term goals, such as a person whose goal is to succeed, or a girl whose goal is to get married. Then success or marriage happens, and the person remains without a goal.
We do not call these goals, but merely desires.
There are also people who may have a spiritual outlook, and say that their goal is repentance, or purity, or monasticism, or service.
Despite the beauty and spirituality of this outlook, we say: repentance is not a goal in itself, nor purity; monasticism is not a goal, nor can service be a goal. All these are merely means that lead to God. As for the only true goal, for which there is no other goal, it is God Himself.
Likewise, there may be a wise person who thinks about his eternity and sees it as a goal. How sublime is thinking about eternity, yet eternity without God is nothing and has no value without Him. How beautiful is the saying of the Lord in His discourse with the Father: “And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God” (John 17:3).
Thus, eternity is not the goal, nor heaven nor paradise either. The goal is God. And we love all these for His sake.
Our goal is God… and for His sake we love the heavenly Jerusalem, which is the dwelling of God with people. For His sake we love the Kingdom, where we enjoy His fellowship, and where He is, there we also are.
It is not fitting that the means turn, in our view, into goals.
A person may love righteousness, or goodness, or holiness, and make that his goal. But what are righteousness, goodness, and holiness except the state of our communion with God, who is the goal, and whom we call clinging to Him righteousness, goodness, and holiness? And our chant remains with the Psalmist: “But it is good for me to draw near to God” (Psalm 73:28). This is the goal.
Our goal, then, is to know God, to meet Him, and to form a relationship with Him: to befriend Him, to have fellowship with Him, to love Him, to abide in Him and He in us, as the branch abides in the vine; to be a dwelling place for Him and a temple for His Holy Spirit; to live in Him, and live by Him, and live with Him—“for in Him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28). He becomes the center of our affections and the center of our feelings. We give Him all the love and all the heart. God becomes for us all in all.
In this state, we also say: worship—prayer, meditation, and prostration—is not a goal. It is merely an expression of our love for the goal, that is, God.
Many make their goal the life of prayer or meditation, or the life of stillness or quietness, or their goals are to attain levels in the life of fasting or silence… and perhaps because of this they become disturbed and differ. In all this, they forget the true goal—God, to whom they direct prayer…
Let God be our goal, not the means that lead to Him.
If God becomes our goal, we are satisfied with Him and need nothing else.
We say to Him with David: “Whom have I in heaven but You? And there is none upon earth that I desire besides You” (Psalm 73:25). David, who when he knew God said: “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want” (Psalm 23:1). He no longer needed anything, because God had satisfied his heart and filled it, and there was no longer any desire in it for anything else.
God became the sole desire of his heart, and everything else diminished. For God’s sake, the heart became ready to leave everything else.
Peter said to the Lord Christ: “See, we have left all and followed You” (Luke 18:28). And why did they leave everything? Because nothing had any value in itself after knowing Christ.
The only value became confined to this single goal, which is the Lord, for whose sake the Apostle Paul said: “Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him” (Philippians 3:8–9).
Truly, if God becomes your goal, everything becomes rubbish in your sight, and you do not grieve over losing anything else. More than that, you say with the Apostle: “Nor do I count my life dear to myself” (Acts 20:24).
Thus, the self also disappears, which many people care about.
One who is preoccupied with himself, whose self grows large in his own eyes and who wants it to grow in the eyes of people, and who strives for this self—this person has not made God his goal. For God Himself says to him: “He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for My sake will find it” (Matthew 10:39).
Those who made God their goal became intoxicated with the love of God and no longer cared about anything around them. The Lord is enough for them, and with Him they desire nothing on earth.
An example of this is the solitaries in deserts and wildernesses, and the wanderers who spent dozens of years without seeing a human face. Do you think these had another goal, or another desire?!
Whoever makes God his goal lives always happy, rejoicing in the Lord.
No one can take his joy away from him, because his goal is with him at all times, and no one can separate him from it. He rejoices in the Lord even in the depths of prisons, as Saint Basil the Great said when he was threatened with exile: “Will I be exiled to a land where God does not exist? ‘The earth is the Lord’s, and all its fullness, the world and those who dwell therein’” (Psalm 24:1).
But if another desire enters the human heart alongside God, it will weary him, because it may be fulfilled or it may not be fulfilled.
Look at a great prophet like Moses. He enjoyed God in every way: he spoke with Him at the burning bush, and on the mountain where he spent forty days with Him. God spoke with him at the door of the tabernacle of meeting and from above the Ark of the Covenant. He saw the wonders of the Lord and lived in them. After this long fellowship, we saw a desire in Moses’ soul to enter the Promised Land, or at least to see it!
What is this, O great sir, whose feet I am unworthy to touch for a blessing? Is it fitting that one who saw God Himself and spoke with Him mouth to ear should care to see a land—any land—that flows with milk and honey? Is it not that a satisfied eye treads honey underfoot?
Therefore, when God refused to let him enter the Promised Land, this was not so much a punishment as it was a rebuke.
Every land in which you meet God is a Promised Land…
The fiery furnace was a Promised Land for the three youths, because there they met the Lord. The island of Patmos, to which John the Beloved was exiled, was a Promised Land, because on it he saw the Lord and was shown what must take place…
As long as our goal is God, every place in which we meet the Lord is a Promised Land, even inside the belly of the whale like Jonah, or in the land of captivity like Daniel…
A person becomes lost when he has many desires, or when he finds himself lost among many goals, while there is need for one…
The Lord Christ rebuked Martha saying: “You are worried and troubled about many things. But one thing is needed” (Luke 10:41–42), and He blessed her sister Mary because she chose this one thing. Do you also have “many things” in your heart, or do you confine all your concern to the one?! Therefore, the Fathers aptly described the monastic life in one phrase, profound in its meaning: “Detachment from all in order to be attached to the One.”
This One is, for them, “all in all”…
Thus, it is not enough to give God your heart, but the whole heart.
So that there remains in the heart no place for another desired goal.
“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength” (Deuteronomy 6).
Therefore, one of the Fathers described the life of repentance with a profound expression related to the heart, saying: repentance is the replacement of one desire with another; it is placing the desire for God instead of the desire for the world and sin…
Truly, the more a person deepens in the love of God and attachment to Him, the more he automatically deepens in the virtue of detachment, and the world dies in his heart.
For he cannot serve two masters or love two lords. It is impossible to love God and the world together, for love of the world is enmity with God, and the love of God is a fire that burns up every other worldly love…
Whoever frees himself from every love of the world and makes God his sole goal lives in complete peace with God and with people.
As one of the Fathers said: “Despise what is in people’s hands, and people will love you.” He who desires nothing, just as his heart is filled with peace, is also filled with courage and rises in stature, as Saint Augustine said: “I sat on the summit of the world when I felt within myself that I desired nothing and feared nothing.”
We must therefore strive toward the goal, focus all our hearts on it, and not make for God a rival in our hearts or desires—especially the self, which loses itself in countless desires.
Adam had much, but he wanted to magnify himself by becoming like God, so he lost himself and lost what he had. Satan himself wanted to rise above all the stars of God and be like the Most High, so he fell into the abyss.
But the one who focuses all his love on the Lord resembles the wise merchant who found a pearl of great price, sold all that he had, and bought it (Matthew 13). This precious pearl is God Himself.
You must ask: What is God’s place in your life?
Is He a goal among many goals?
Or is He not present in your life at all?
Or is He everything to you, with whom you desire nothing on earth?
[1] An article by His Holiness Pope Shenouda III – Al-Keraza Magazine – Ninth Year – Issue Thirty-One, 4–8–1978.
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