The Meaning of Life is Communion with God

by Fr. Thomas Hopko –
We are here for communion with God who is love, the One in whose image and likeness each one of us is made. We find this communion by loving as God loves us.

Love is radical self-giving for the good of another, the denial of self by which our true selves are born. It is the emptying by which we are filled, the foolishness by which we become wise, the weakness by which we become strong. It is the dying through which we become alive for unending life.

In this world, love always entails sacrifice and suffering, fidelity and forgiveness. It is fulfilled only in death. It is our sole source of joy.

My spiritual father often said that the miracle of all miracles is the ability to transform through love the smallest, seemingly insignificant detail of the routine drudgery of everyday existence into paradise; the ability to become ourselves at each moment, a fresh paradise to those around us, thereby becoming gods by grace for those who are gods to us.

Each person accepts or rejects communion with God in his or her own unique manner. For some, the way includes an encounter with Christ. For all, it includes the encounter with God’s word and spirit dwelling within us. There are in any case no techniques for its accomplishment.

The act of communion comes always as grace. For those who know it, it is not life’s meaning, purpose, or goal; it is life itself. God with us, making us what God is.

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Interview from book Meaning of Life published by Life Magazine in 1991. (Minor organizational edits to optimize readability made by Chris Banescu.)