Part 5, Chapter 1
The Most Holy Trinity: To love God and be forever in Heaven is our final goal in life. But it should be our first goal too! Our goal should be to love the Lord our God, with all our heart, strength, soul and being. This should be our focus in all of our goals. So if I doing something, is it helping me to love God and will it help me to get to Heaven? All of our goals in life should be wrapped around this central goal of loving God. By loving God as we should, we get to Heaven. So we need to check and make sure that we are moving forward. Am I making sure that all that I am doing is helping me to live this out?
Thus if complete communion with God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit is our goal, we need to keep this focus in mind. So that is why St. Francis De Sales says about a man’s need to check how he is doing. “And at least once a year he will take the works to pieces and examine them carefully; I mean his affections and passions, so as to repair whatever may be amiss” (Introduction to the Devout Life, 188). Yearly, we need to check our resolutions (goals) and see how we are living them out or not. The Holy Spirit will help us make this examination. It is by this checking that we can continue to make strides in the spiritual life, it shows us where we were and where we are now. It is than good for setting the goals that will help us encompass our main goal which is to totally love God. “These exercises will repair the waste caused by time, will kindle your heart, revive your good resolutions, and cause the graces of your mind to flourish anew” (Introduction to the Devout Life, 188-189). With this focus, we will know ourselves and know where we desire to go: keeping God at the center of our lives.