The meaning of life is not to become good
Sunday Sermon on the Second Week of Great Lent.
The second week of Great Lent is dedicated to the memory of St Gregory Palamas. This saint became a symbolic figure of all the Hesychast Fathers, a visible embodiment of prayerful spiritual activity, inner spiritual transformation, and the acquisition of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, by returning us to the memory of Saint Gregory Palamas, to the Hesychast debates about the nature of the Taboric Light, the Church repeatedly reminds us of the meaning of the Christian life on Earth, as well as of prayer as the primary tool through which this meaning is achieved.
St Gregory Palamas, who lived in the thirteenth century, repeated what the entire theological Tradition of the Orthodox Church had taught before him. St. Seraphim of Sarov succinctly expressed this in his famous saying: "The meaning of human life is the acquisition of the Holy Spirit." Partaking in Grace is the entrance to the doors of eternity with God. The lack of Grace, even with all other purely human virtues, can also mean the absence of this person's name in the Book of Life.
The brief period of our earthly life passes along the line dividing two spiritual worlds. The uncertainty of our spiritual identity is actualized through our free will and choices.
Divinity and demonism are two sacred directions projected into the infinite stillness of eternity and are the result of our free choice. The undefined moral "grayness" of those who have passed into the next world, who were somehow neither bad nor sinless, does not testify to the ambiguity of their choice.
The essential meaning of their lives has already been formed. And the fact that the seed of their personality, growing from this essence, has not yet borne evident fruit merely means that its ripening is not yet complete, but its direction is already determined. After all, even the righteous in the future life will not remain in a static immobility of holiness. They will grow from strength to strength, ascending to the infinitely incomprehensible Divine Light through a constant saturation with Divine Grace.
By analogy, the opposite choice of direction leads to the degradation of the personality and, as a result, the soul’s separation from the Source of Being and His Light, acquiring characteristics typical of dark forces. Without fighting the evil nesting in the heart, a person becomes more and more rooted in sinful soil with each passing day, and over time, a demon-like personality grows.
Moreover, our opinions about people and their moral qualities are deeply wrong because our scale of evaluating others is greatly distorted. A person may seem, from our earthly point of view, very good, but if God is unnecessary, uninteresting or indifferent to them, then even in the afterlife, such a soul will not find God. Therefore, the question of where virtuous humanists and convinced atheists will dwell in eternity is entirely meaningless.
This is precisely what St Gregory Palamas teaches us in his debates with Barlaam of Calabria about the nature of the Taboric Light. The meaning of life is not to become "good" but to become "a man of God". Certainly, a godly person will also be a good person. But a good person can also be an atheist. And in that case, their life will be a loss of the opportunity to be adopted by God, and thus the loss of its main meaning.
This dispute goes far beyond school theology, which was completely foreign to the Eastern Fathers due to their way of life. God is not an object of study.
God is not an Absolute principle that can be researched and used to build philosophical models. God is a living, loving Personality who desires, by His Love, to give us an abundance of His gifts. The only way to come to know God is through growing in love for Him through prayer and living according to His commandments. All our good deeds, if not done for God, lose any meaning and value. St Seraphim of Sarov teaches us this.
The teachings of St Gregory Palamas were never understood in the West, where the legalistic understanding of salvation as "earning" heavenly benefits through profitable investments in virtuous deeds predominated. Even monastic orders, instead of prayer, became involved in extensive charitable activities, while prayer has always been the main meaning of monastic life in the East. The world does not stand on good deeds, it stands on the prayers of the saints.
This is why it was so important for St Gregory Palamas to give a justification for Hesychasm as the main tool of Divine knowledge. In Orthodoxy, the main indicator of the quality of spiritual life and its measure is prayer. Prayer is God's price on our soul. The higher it is, the holier we are. How we pray is how we are as Christians. Our relationship with God determines our prayer, and conversely, our prayer reflects our relationship with God.
Prayer is the highest and most difficult art in the world. There is no limit to the perfection of this art, which ascends into the infinite realms of contemplative life.
This path begins with sluggish, weak, and distracted prayer, which gradually grows. As the mind begins to unite with the words of prayer, to feel their power, to perceive them with the heart, and respond with feelings, it ascends higher and higher, where the words of prayer transform from meaningful sounds into a heartfelt state, when the words become feelings.
At the highest levels of prayer, the need for any words disappears. The human spirit gradually ascends from feeling to feeling, to the transcendent realms of prayer, where even thought ceases. That is why the Holy Fathers teach us that prayer is not in words, but in thoughts and feelings. The main thing in it is faith, heartfelt contrition and the surrender of oneself into God's hands. The essence of soul salvation occurs mysteriously within us, in the hidden, secret part of the person, unseen by external eyes. Everything external either helps or hinders this process.
Hesychia is the peace of mind and heart, an impassive, absolutely pure soul free from the slightest trace of sin, floating in the boundless Uncreated Light of Grace.
So, the beginning of Lent starts with the "Parable of the Publican and the Pharisee", through which the Church teaches us the conditions of prayer: to stand before God as "dust", "ashes", "an ant", or "a little child" when you are about to raise your voice to Him. And on this Sunday, the Church points out the purpose of prayer. According to St Gregory Palamas, prayer elevates us above all the angelic orders, making us gods by grace.
Inconceivable, incomparable, even incomprehensible to the highest heavenly powers, God has prepared a mystery for humanity – to become partakers of the Divine nature (2 Peter 1:4).
