Our be-all and end-all

WHAT is the ultimate and constant purpose of our life? It

is to be like God as God wants us to be. We have been created in his

image and likeness. He wants us to be like him, full of love. We are

meant to share his very own life.

            To be sure, God will do it for us. On our own, we can

never attain that ideal. But we have to give our all to correspond to

God’s will for us like good workers toward their master. Otherwise, we

will frustrate God deepest wish for us. That correspondence is the

be-all and end-all of our life.

            In short, everything that we are, that we have and that we

do should be oriented toward this final aim of our life. Nothing

should be done without this ultimate goal in mind. In a sense, this is

the only thing necessary in life.

            We may have many different goals, objectives, ambitions in

life, but all of them should be subordinated and made to work for our

life’s be-all and end-all. And our ultimate goal can also be described

as nothing other than our own sanctification and salvation. In other

words, everything that we do should work for our sanctification and

the salvation of all mankind.

            In our life, we will always have some short-term,

medium-term and long-term goals. We can have a goal set for each of

the different aspects of our life: physical, social, family,

professional, etc. But we need to see to it that all these goals, in

some kind of synergy, would always reinforce the ultimate and constant

goal of our own sanctification and the salvation of mankind.

            We need to broaden our understanding of the real purpose

of our life, and get to put ourselves into its dynamics. At this

juncture of our life in the world, we need to know better about our

life’s be-all and end-all and avoid pursuing things that do not

contribute to it.

            It is interesting to note that actually everything in our

life can be made to work for this be-all and end-all of our life. Our

mundane and temporal affairs should be made to work for our ultimate

aim in life. Even our limitations and weaknesses, our mistakes and

failures can be taken advantage of to pursue this ultimate goal. The

secret is always having the intention to offer everything to God and

to act on it the way God in Christ through the Holy Spirit does.

            In this regard, it is always good to be reminded of the

need to rectify our intentions always. Things always start with our

intentions. And let’s hope that we can keep that rectitude of

intention all the time, even in our trying moments when we are

intensely tempted and pressured to go along the ways of pride, vanity,

greed, or the world in general.

            To have the rectitude of intention means to assume the

mind of Christ in doing what he did to save us. He preached, he did a

lot of good, including performing some miracles. And in the end, he

went through his passion and death just to sanctify and save us. His

was pure love, and that is what we are supposed to reflect in our life

also.

            Whenever we plan something, we should never forget to ask

whether that something would reinforce our goal of sanctification and

salvation. We should not just stop at the level of worldly values like

profitability, practicability and the like, when we do some planning.

            Definitely, we need to do our planning in deep prayer. We

just cannot do our planning in the context of purely worldly

considerations. We have to relate everything to God. It should be love

for God that drives us to think, speak and act, and to undertake all

kinds of projects here on earth.