We cite an excerpt from the works of Bishop Theophan about this.

"Man's ultimate goal is in God, in communion or living union with God. Created in the image and likeness of God [however, man was created in the image (Gen. 1:27) of God, although he was intended to be created in the image and likeness (Gen. 1:26). As for Gen. 5:1, in translation 72 it is translated differently from the civil synodal, namely: in the image of God create him – here translated according to the text of the Ostrog Bible. Therefore, we are created (although it would be more correct to speak of birth – and breathed into his face the breath of life (Gen. 2, 7). This is said only about man) in the image, and to the likeness (according to the interpretation of some Holy Fathers, beginning with St. Gregory of Nyssa) we must strive, receiving it in Christ – Ed.], man by his very nature is a certain image of the Divine race. Being the race of God, he cannot but seek communion with God, not only as his principle and prototype, but also as the supreme good. That is why our heart is sufficient only when it possesses God and is possessed by God. Nothing but God calms him down.

Solomon knew much, possessed much, and enjoyed much, but at last he had to recognize all this as vanity and corruption (Ecclesiastes 1:8; 1718; 3,1011; 8:17). There is only one rest for man in God: what I have in heaven, and from Thee what we desire on earth: my heart and my flesh shall perish, O God of my heart, and my portion, God for ever (Psalm 72:2526). "In God, life," teaches St. Basil the Great, "alienation and separation from God is an evil more intolerable than even the future torments of Gehenna, an evil that is the most grievous for man, as the deprivation of light for the eye and the taking of life for an animal." And again: "What was the primary good for the soul? Being with God and being united with Him through love. Having fallen away from Him, she began to suffer" (The Works of the Holy Father Basil the Great, Volume 4, p.154).

For this reason we are inspired: "Seek the Lord, seek His face out" (Psalm 104:4). "The Prophet Moses made the vision of the face of God the edge of his desires even after God had already revealed through him and in him so many extraordinary actions of His goodness and omnipotence: "If I have found grace before Thee, shew me Thyself, that I may see Thee wisely" (Exodus 33:13), he prayed.

With what fear the Prophet David cried out to the Lord: "Cast me not away from Thy presence... (Psalm 50:13), knowing that those who distance themselves from Him will perish (Psalm 72:27), with what desire he always aspired to God: "My soul thirsts for God" (Psalm 62:2), in the same way the deer longs for the springs of water, so my soul longs for Thee, O God! (Psalm 41:2), with what warmth I rested in Him alone: but it is good for me to cling to God! (Psalm 72:28).

But it is not in this one aspiration of all desires to God that our good lies. Thirst without quenching, hunger without satiation, need without satisfaction is sorrow, illness, torment. Seeking God, we want to find Him, we want to possess Him and be possessed by Him, to sincerely partake of Him, to be in Him and to have Him in ourselves (Macarius the Great, Epistle – Moscow. 1852. p.429). It is in this living, inner, direct communion of God with man and man with God that is his ultimate goal."

This is how this communion is depicted in the Word of God. Thus God Himself says of some: "My Spirit shall not dwell in these men, for they are not flesh" (Gen. 6:3), and to others He promises: "I will dwell in them, and I will be like them" (2 Corinthians 6:16). "Listen," says St. Chrysostom to this place, "who dwells in you? You carry God within you." The Saviour promises the innermost indwelling of God into the human heart when He says: "Unto him let us come, and make our abode with him" (John 14:23). St. John the Theologian teaches that when someone abides in love, not only does he abide in God, but God also abides in him (1 John 4:16). In the Holy Fathers, living communion with God is elevated to the deification of man. Thus, St. Gregory the Theologian depicts man as a "living being" through striving for God, attaining deification. Theodore, Bishop of Edessa, teaches about the goal of man in the following way: "The goal of our life is blessedness, or, what is all the same, the Kingdom of Heaven or the Kingdom of God, which consists not only in beholding the Royal, so to speak, Trinity, but also in receiving Divine influence and, as it were, receiving deification, and in this influence finding the fulfillment and fulfillment of all shortcomings and imperfections. In this consists the food of the intellectual powers, that is, in the filling of deficiencies by means of the Divine influence."