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."

In St. Macarius, in almost every conversation, one can find a reminder of the living communion of the soul with God. Thus, in the 46th discourse, he teaches that God created the soul of man in such a way that He might be His bride and companion, and that He might be with it one dissolution and one spirit. Therefore, "if the soul cleaves to the Lord, then the Lord, moved to it by mercy and love, comes and clings to it, and thus is one spirit and one dissolution, and one mind is the soul and the Lord. ' It is necessary for man," he says in another place, "that not only he himself be in God, but also that God be in him."

"Anyone would not think, however, that a living union with God is the disappearance of the soul in God with the violence of its independence and freedom. No, although the soul does stand under the Divine influence, touches God in a certain way and is imbued with His power, yet it does not cease to be a soul – a rationally free being – just as red-hot iron or coal, when imbued with fire, does not cease to be iron and coal. It acquires only through this communion the fullest and quickest power to act according to the will of God freely, but also unquestioningly.

On the other hand, it would not be true if anyone began to think that when communion with God is the ultimate goal of man, then man will be vouchsafed it later, at the end of all his labors. No, it must be an eternal, uninterrupted state of man, so that since there is no communion with God, since it is not felt, man must confess that he stands outside his goal and his destiny. A state in which a person realizes that the true God is his God and he himself is God's, that is, he says in his heart to God: My Lord and my God! (John 20:28), like the Apostle Thomas and to himself: "I am God, I am God" (Psalm 44:5) – such a state is the only true state of man, it is the only decisive sign of the presence in him of the beginning of a truly moral and spiritual life."