Purpose of Life: The Catholic Gospel

What is man that you are mindful of him, and a son of man that you care for him? Yet you have made him little less than a god, crowned him with glory and honor (Psalm 8:5-6).

What is the purpose of our existence? This is probably the question asked the most in philosophy. Yet, the answer to this question from a biblical and Catholic perspective provides us with a testimony of God’s love for us. For what both the Church and scripture tells us, the reason why any of us exists is because God wanted to share with us His very nature. This sharing of God’s blessed life is what makes each one of us unique and irreplaceable as individuals who are the very image and likeness of God.

God does not do this because he needs us or would not be complete without us knowing Him this intimately. For God is perfect and complete all on His own. It is an act of love that has motivated Him to share with us His very own divine nature. Like, how a husband shares everything he has with his wife, God imparts to us His essence. His eternal life.

This is the mystery that Paul spoke about when he said: For no one hates his own flesh but rather nourishes and cherishes it, even as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. “For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” This is a great mystery, but I speak in reference to Christ and the church (Ephesians 5:29-32).

God loves us so much that he became a man like us. He did this so that He could be united to us and make every one of us a Temple in which He would intimately dwell among us.

This great love that God has for all of us is the reason why He does what He does and allows what we each choose to do and become. All that happens is an act of love that God does and permits out of love. In even our trials and difficulties, God is drawing close to you.

God presents His grace as mercy and strength in every moment of our lives. He is always calling out to us and providing reasons why we would want to seek Him. Every moment of our lives has some special revelation about Him that is meant to motivate us to love Him with all that we are.

God calls us by His grace to be united with each other. Sin has divided us and caused us to be estranged and not care about our fellow human beings. We live separate lives focused on our own problems and needs rather than realize the beauty of God’s love that can be found in the uniqueness of every person we live around. A uniqueness that can only be fully experienced when we through grace come together in the unity of the family of humanity that God draws us to be in His Church.

A unity that is only possible when we find His love presented to us in Jesus Christ His Son. A person who is God incarnate as our Redeemer and Savior from the loneliness and abandonment of sin.

Here in the final weeks of Lent, we learn of the love of God that draws us into communion with Himself and one another. A union that is only possible in his Son. For through Jesus Christ, God invites each of us to become, in the Holy Spirit, his adopted children. He calls us to share in His eternal life.

A sharing of the image and likeness of God that makes each one of us unique and irreplaceable. A sharing that is only possible when we accept the grace of new birth that is presented in baptism through the Church of Christ. A Church that is His body. A unity of love that is the reason why we exist at all.