Mankind is created in the image and likeness of God for the purpose of sharing in the Divine Life and participating in the blessedness of the infinite glory and goodness of the Holy Trinity. The Beatific Vision is not seeing God in His essence, but rather seeing God by possessing Him within oneself. Communion with God is attained through the cooperation of the divine and human will, whereby the follower of Jesus Christ puts on Christ through the sacraments of the Church and imitates the life of Christ through the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit, to the glory of God the Father.
In the opening words of His Sermon on the Mount, Jesus describes all that produces beatitude. The very intent of the Beatitudes is to issue the Father’s divine call for man to enter into the blessedness of the Divine Life. The Beatitudes therefore illuminate the pathway to theosis (“deification” or “divinization”), a journey of eternal progress in the virtuous life by which one is perpetually transformed into the likeness of God, from glory to glory. Drawing on the Scriptures and the writings of the Church Fathers, this book offers the soul a concrete, step-by-step guide for advancing consciously in the spiritual life toward the divine goal of theosis.
