What is the purpose of the spiritual life? I cannot think of a more important question, and I am amazed by how rarely I hear this question being discussed. For if we do not know the answer to this question, our life of prayer, and our spiritual life in general, will never grow to maturity because it lacks the knowledge and awareness of its very purpose.
The spiritual life, namely our relationship with God, is life. It is life in its utter fullness and truth. Without a spiritual life, hence a conscious and intentional relationship with God, a person is not fully alive. It matters little what kind of earthly success a person may experience in life, what their social status is, and even what other people may think of them. All these earthly realities are here today and gone tomorrow, whereas with God, “his mercy endures forever” (Psalm 136:1).
The fact that we exist means we are in relationship with God automatically, since God does not create and then distance himself or ignore his creation. The Lord affirms this truth beautifully through the prophet Isaiah. “Can a woman forget her suckling child, that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you. Behold, I have graven you on the palms of my hands” (Isaiah 49:15-16). Every single person that exists is known by God right now and is therefore in relationship with him, regardless of whether they are aware of this truth or not. Hence, this spiritual life or this relationship with God is the deepest and most important truth of human life. The great tragedy of history, and even of Christianity, is that many people have lived and are currently living with relatively little thought about their relationship with God, about the purpose of that relationship, and what God desires of us.
Furthermore, even for the small minority of people who are interested in the spiritual life and consider it important, many of them tend to view it in worldly terms. Their spiritual life is self-centered and goal-oriented. When a person has a conversion or reversion experience, he almost naturally tends to project worldly goals and aspirations onto the spiritual life and equate those goals with its purpose. For example, when we are young disciples, we tend to think the purpose of the spiritual life is about our personal or apostolic success, having certain experiences of God in prayer that we may have read about in the lives of the saints, or in having a particular vocation. For some, the spiritual life means that they must stay up to date with all the new books, retreats, and speakers that everyone is talking about. The spiritual life for beginners is often like a checklist, and the more I check off that list, the holier I am becoming, or so we tend to think.
Of course, apostolic success, experiences of God in prayer, having a certain vocation, going on retreats, are all good and important things that occur in our spiritual life. However, the danger is that we, and not God, are at the center. Before Copernicus (1473-1543) most people believed that the earth (us) was the center of the universe and that the sun revolved around the earth (us). What Copernicus discovered was that things were quite different. It is the earth (us) that revolves around the sun. What does that mean? It means that we are not the center of things! As good as my desires, plans, experiences, and success might be, there is much more, because there is so much more than me.
The purpose of the spiritual life then is not self-fulfillment, but self-emptying. Self-emptying into what? Into God, the Son (Jesus) who is the center and whom we revolve around. The purpose of the spiritual life is to leave earth (ourselves) and to become one with the Son (Jesus). In short, it is to become God.
Many people throughout history (and the list continues in our day) believe that they are God by nature. Christianity proclaims, of course, that we are not God by nature and that no process of evolution will ever make us God by nature.
However, what Christianity does proclaim is that through grace we are invited to share and partake in God’s very life. The theological word for this is divinization, or as the New Testament describes it, to “become partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4). What the word divinization attempts to describe is essentially the process of holiness, whereby our human nature becomes transformed by divine grace. It is this process of divinization that enables one to live the life of God, since it is a sharing in God’s life or becoming “God like.” This is what the Fathers of the Church have always understood as ultimately the Christian vocation and therefore, the purpose of the spiritual life, which is nothing else but the purpose of life.
St. Irenaeus, writing in the second century said, “God himself is the life of those who participate in him.”[1] St. Basil of Caesarea writing in the fourth century said that “The human being is an animal who has received the vocation to become God.”[2] Probably the most famous quote regarding divinization–and by far the most shocking–is by St. Athanasius, as quoted in the Catechism of the Catholic Church: “For the Son of God became man so that we might become God.” [3]
By “becoming God,” what these Fathers and Doctors of the Church are speaking about is this reality of divinization. Lest we think that this is merely an ancient teaching that has fallen to the wayside, the Catechism of the Catholic Church emphasizes this ancient teaching. In paragraphs 456-460 in a section entitled “Why did the Word become flesh?” the Church teaches us that there are four essential reasons why Jesus became man: First, to save us by reconciling us with God. Second, so that we might know God’s love. Third, to be our model of holiness. Finally, to make us partakers of the divine nature! In other words, Jesus became man so that we can share in God’s life, i.e. become divinized.
[1] Philip Krill, Life in the Trinity: A Catholic Vision of Communion and Deification, Lulu Publishing Services, 2017, 168.
[2] Olivier Clement, The Roots of Christian Mysticism, New City Press, 1995, 76.
[3] Catechism of the Catholic Church, #460, 116.
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