In this article I have been attempting to present what the Greek Fathers have said about the true goal of this earthly life. Personal transformation is the goal of life, not heaven. This transformation is only brought about when we engage in metanoia or repentance. So it is critical that we come to a real understanding of this process.

One of the Fathers, when speaking about repentance, put is this way:

In heaven everything has life through the Holy Spirit and the Lord has given us on earth the same Holy Spirit; in desert, cave and mountain, in every place, Christ’s warriors who fight the good fight live by the Holy Spirit. If we preserve the Holy Spirit we shall be free of all darkness and life eternal will be in our souls.

If all men would repent and keep God’s commandments, there would be paradise on earth, for ‘the Kingdom of Heaven is within us.’ The Kingdom of Heaven is the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit is the same in heaven and on earth.

Even though we all probably know this intellectually, even though we hear this at every Church service, yet we usually resist the challenge of Christ’s first call to repentance, because we fear that we shall in some way loose our freedom; when, in fact, true freedom comes to him, says St. John of the Ladder, who voluntarily delivers himself into servitude – servitude, that is, to God.

Based on the tradition of the Fathers, we can say that there are two basic ways by which one may arrive at the realization that a fundamental change of life must take place.

First, there is what we might call the way of light, and second the way of darkness. By the way of light we refer to such exceptionally rare occasions as when Christ Himself makes Himself known to us in some way so that we recognize how far we stand from what we have been called to become. This causes us to beseech Him to help us to change.

By the way of darkness we refer to the more common way by which the chasm that divides us from Christ is revealed to us. God, in His mercy, allows us to see ourselves as we really are. He allows us to come to the realization that without Him we cannot do or even think any good thing. And the soul, seeing this, begins to cry out for help, asking Christ to enlighten, to illumine our darkened soul. This usually takes some kind of crisis in our lives during which we begin to realize that our old way of thinking is ineffective in helping us deal with life as it is. We come to an awareness that we need God to get through life!