In the last installment of this article I began sharing with you what the Fathers thought being in Christ concretely means. They felt and believed that the new life in Christ, brought about by the actions of Christ, implies personal and free commitment. I shared with you that this element of freedom is essential to the doctrine of salvation as understood by the Byzantine Fathers. On the last day the Resurrection will indeed be universal, but blessedness will be given only to those who longer for it. Nicholas Cabasilas, one of the preeminent Fathers of our Eastern Church, tells us that baptismal “resurrection of nature” is a free gift from God, given even to children who do not express consent; but “the Kingdom, the contemplation of God, and common life with Christ belong to free will.”

What does this tell us? In order to have a real experience of God we have to want to have this experience of God and be prepared, by how we lived this life, to truly have this experience. If we have not wanted to have an experience of God, we are not prepared to have one. So a very important part of life’s journey is to cooperate with life and develop a desire to experience God.

Byzantine theologians seldom devote much explicit attention to speculation about the exact fate of souls after death. The fact that the Logos assumed human nature as such implied the universal   validity of redemption, but not of universal salvation, a doctrine which in 533 was formally condemned as Origenistic. Freedom must remain an inalienable element of every man, and no one is to be forced into the Kingdom of God against his own free choice; the idea of universal salvation had to be rejected precisely because it presupposed an ultimate limitation of human freedom – the freedom to remain outside of God.

But by rejecting God, human freedom, in fact, destroys itself. Outside of God, man ceases to be authentically and fully human. He is enslaved to the devil through death. This idea, which is       central to the thought of Maximus and which made him profess so strongly the existence of a human, created will in Christ, serves as the basis of the Byzantine understanding of the destiny of man: participation in God, or Theosis (deification), as the goal of human existence.

This, I think, is a very important point. If the goal of human existence is truly participation in God, then this goal becomes the meaning and purpose of life. The life given to us is designed to help us achieve a greater participation in God, Who we are joined to by sharing in His life. This is how we must begin to think about ourselves and our lives.