While there are many purposes to our existence, one singular purpose weaves together all of our duties, roles, sufferings, and trials into a seamless garment: our deification, what Eastern Christians call “theosis.” We are destined to become more and more God-like. Jesus said, “I have come to bring you life and life abundantly.” The life that Jesus came to bring is an ever-deepening participation in the Divine Life. Maximus the Confessor, a recognized saint in both the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church, made this bold proclamation: “A sure warrant for looking forward with hope to deification of human nature is provided by the Incarnation of God (Jesus), which makes man God to the same degree as God Himself became man. …Let us become the image of the one whole God, bearing nothing earthly in ourselves, so that we may consort with God and become gods, receiving from God our existence as gods. For it is clear that He Who became man without sin will divinize human nature…and will raise it up for His own sake to the same degree as He lowered Himself for man’s sake.”
The process of deification has nothing to do with inflating the personality or the ego. Quite the opposite, it has to do with self-emptying, the process of letting go of everything we think we are and think we need in order to be happy. In this inner emptiness, this interior poverty, we allow God to fill us with divine energy, light, and wisdom. Still further, by giving ourselves over to love we necessarily become God-like because God is love. Ultimately, we transcend ourselves, our attachments, and our narrowness in and through love. Thomas Merton tells us, “Love is the revelation of our deepest personal meaning, value, and identity. Love, then, is a transforming power of mystical intensity that endows the lovers with qualities and capacities they never dreamed they could possess. Love is the perfection of life.”
Love is the revelation
Of my deepest
Personal meaning,
Value, and identity.
