The Trinity.
All of existence finds its source in the Trinity, and the Trinity made all of creation to reflect itself in some way. Nature calls out for men to worship, song allures the hearts of many to come to the Eternal Fountain. Men, however, share in the Trinity in a very special way. We were made not only in the image of God, we were made in the likeness of God. Unlike anything else in creation, we are the privileged (yet some of us damned) ones to find rationality and person-hood in our very nature, replicas (albeit imperfect replicas) of the Trinity's rationality and person-hood. Why? God wanted to share Himself. It's what He does by his very existence. He did not need to create us, yet Love desired it, and so it was, that something would be created with whom God could share Himself in a way He could not with the birds or the bees. It is our purpose, our destiny, our life and the definition of our person-hood to be in union with our source, to be a reflection of our source. So now we must look to our source to see what we, as persons should be. One looks at the Trinity and sees communion, in its most perfect form. The Father loves the Son who loves the Father with a love so perfect as to be a person, the Holy Spirit. The three share one will, this one will being the ultimate common good, and the three work harmoniously in and with each other to bring about this common good. In this we find our destiny, that we should live with all other persons in complete harmony and love. The children might be disappointed in knowing that heaven is not the geysers of root beer nor the grandest of beach houses, but a perfect community where God and man and angels all live with one agenda, one unshakable virtue, love. This is not only our future destiny- It is our destiny now. It is our calling. The core of our souls cries out for this destiny, and there was a day when those called Adam and Eve lived their destiny. This destiny, however, is slightly more fragile than fate- it can be denied, and we have denied it.
Christ
If it were for justice, we would all be in Hell. But love could not stand where justice had us going. Our destiny was for Heaven, and God would be damned before He gave up hope on His creation. While Adam and Eve had been born into this blessed destiny filled and completed, the fall and the rot of sin had left a hole inside of the human nature that could only be repaired by man. God is a God of justice, and justice demanded we repay for our sin. But how could we? We couldn't. We never could. God had to step in, and not only did he step in, he stepped in so dramatically and wildly that we are tempted to celebrate the sin that warranted so great a redeemer. Oh happy fault! What good would life have been to us, had He not come as our redeemer? Christ, the Incarnation of the Divine Word, God made man, become one of us. He came for us and our salvation, and has merited our salvation on the cross, but that is not the end of His graces. He has come to do more than save us, He came to heal us. By the waters of Baptism he calls us back to Him. By His grace and the abundant mercy of His crucifixion we are made whole again. The destiny that was lost with paradise was brought back to us in Christ. Yet He sees we are broken. Like Thomas, who had everything without seeing yet still needed to see to believe, God reaches out His hand to us every day in the Sacraments so that we may feel His wounds and believe He has healed us. Love so loved us, that he not only emptied himself to take the form of the servant, he not only embraced death (even death on a cross), but he continues to empty Himself and allows us to share in Him in the Eucharist. It is in this that our purpose is expanded, not only to live our destiny, but "to be healed by the Sacraments with the grace of Christ so as to continuously grow towards our destiny to live in perfect love and harmony with God, mankind, and the angels."
Pain
And yet there is still part of us, susceptible to the lies of the World and Satan, that rebels against the revealed destiny. You could call this the gnomic will, the part of our souls that chooses not to turn towards God but decides instead to rebel against it, darkening and attaching itself to our natural human will to choose God. The more our natural will attaches itself to this gnomic will, the farther away from God we drift and deeper into sin do we crawl. We become attached to our own darkness, we find ourselves grafted onto our own inequity. We are not drinking from the Fount of the Eternal, we are feeding on emptiness. Yet, despite our excursion into ourselves (which inevitably leads to despair) God continues to call us into the light. In order for us to truly respond to this call, in order for us to live once more in our destiny, to be filled with the bread of Eternal Life, we must rip ourselves from this gnomic will, this gnomic will that when faced with opposition reveals his true identity. He is not an innocent, passive creature with a nice disposition and a cunning seduction, he is revealed to be a monster- snarling and clutching with seven-pronged claws of lust, greed, sloth, rage, envy, gluttony and pride. Yet we cannot forget that this monster is part of us. The war begins, with our natural will pulling desperately away from the darkest part of us. When self fights self, there can be nothing but despair. With God, however, and the friends that He has provided us with, we learn to become unattached from ourselves. We are called outside of ourselves to community. But these truly holy relationships that we build, we rebel against them. There is a part of ourselves that does not want to be good, that does not want to inherit our destiny. So when we love others truly, there is no doubt pain. Out gnomic will scratches more desperately. In order for the natural will to succeed, he must rise above the scratching, and he must defy himself, even through the immense pain. It is only when he steadfastly faces pain that the natural will can find his destiny. Our meaning of life, then, becomes "to first face the pain caused by our sin, and in facing that pain with the help of God and our friends to be healed by the Sacraments with the grace of Christ, so as to continuously grow towards our destiny to live in perfect love and harmony with God, mankind, and the angels."
Joy
What the soul finds among the pain, however, is joy. The pain is not for naught, the pain is the product of the soul leaving himself and entering harmony once again, bit by bit into communion with God. As he begins to live in the Sacraments and live his destiny with God once again, there is a whole new feeling that he experience. Joy. The Christian can never ever forget about joy. We have become too grave, too grim, and we have lost sight of the fact that what lies in God is joy. For what other reason would God create us if it would bring us unhappiness? What good is an eternal destiny we are not happy with? When we begin to come back into harmony with God's will, we see the truth of things, that God wants us to have happiness. Not fake happiness, not happiness that is fleeting, but true joy, fulfillment. Happiness that roots itself in our souls and grows with the nourishment of grace. Life is a gift, every moment is a gift given by God. Sometimes we can ruin this gift. Sometimes we can get in our own way, or even get into each other's way. But ultimately God wants our lives to be filled with joy, even if it takes pain to get there. We will never quite get there, though. Our lives are a constant struggle for joy, for complete oneness with God, but we never achieve it. No matter how hard we try, there we will stand, completely separate from God. Until we die. When we die, we achieve the one thing that God has made us for. We have struggled long and hard to meet our destiny, to achieve it in this lifetime, and this striving is completed in death. This means, then, that death should be seen as a bad thing. We should embrace death, which is perhaps the hardest thing to do that causes the most pain. Why? Because our gnomic wills loathe death. They fear it. In death the will who has run away from all things good realizes that he is starving and thirsty and has denied himself the Bread and Water that has been offered him. In death he finds himself- he finds nothing. For those fortunate few who have embraced this Eternal Wellspring, however, we find God. We find eternity. Death is the final pilgrimage home. In death we are lifted up, we are made one with God, and with an infinite joy that lasts forever and ever and will never fade away. Our gnomic wills dead and gone, we drink free of the Eternal Fountain, we feast abundantly of the Bread of Life, and our destiny is infinitely and eternally completed. A new antiquity, a refreshing familiarity. We have gotten what we wanted, not only what we wanted, but what we were made for. In the joy of death, through the pain of denying ourselves and accepting Christ, we find the Trinity who made us for Himself. The meaning of life, then, is this. "To first face the pain caused by our sin, and in facing that pain with the help of God and our friends, to be healed by the Sacraments with the grace of Christ, so as to continuously grow towards our destiny to live in perfect love and harmony with God, mankind, and the angels, and in this journey finding reasonable joy in this life that is a mere shadow of the infinite and eternal joy waiting for us in the next."
A man who can do this, I suspect, is a success.
Peace,
-The Boy Pilgrim
-The Boy Pilgrim
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