The Ultimate Aim of the Third Order

My friends, what is the ultimate reason for our earthly existence? Is it to practice virtue for its own sake? To escape hell? To gain heaven? To save our souls? To save the souls of others? No. It is none of these things. The ultimate reason for our earthly existence is simply this: the good pleasure of God. That's right. We were made by God simply to please Him from a pure intention. Any other reason given for our earthly existence is infinitely inferior.

In our early catechism, we learn that we must know, love, and serve God. Knowing God is the first step. We cannot love or serve that which we do not know. However, knowing God is not enough. The devil knows God, but look where he ended up. There are many who know God well through the study of religion, philosophy, and theology and who have the supernatural virtue of Faith, but nevertheless are well on their way to eternal damnation! Why? Because the knowledge of God should lead one, through humility, to appreciate and love His infinite goodness, but many stop at knowledge and have no desire to go further. Pride, the root of all evil, condemned the devil and his minions and it is the same pride that condemns many to their eternal damnation as well. On the other hand, the humble soul will take this knowledge and respond with an acknowledgement of the great debt she owes to God for all that He has given her and for the reparation of her sins. The humble soul can then be moulded by God and justified by the reception of the Sacrament of Baptism or Penance through which she will be infused with sanctifying grace and the supernatural virtues of Faith, Hope, and Charity.

Charity (or the love of God), the queen of all virtues, impels the soul to serve God. But what does it mean to serve God? To serve God means to do His will. And what is the consequence of doing the will of God? It pleases Him. Beware, however, of those who claim they love God, but don't do His will. Such people are liars and only end up displeasing God and incurring His wrath. So to summarize what I have discussed thus far:

The knowledge of God leads to the love of God. The love of God leads to serving Him by doing His will. Doing the will of God pleases Him.

The discussion does not end here, however. Note that I stated in my opening paragraph that we were made to please God, but I added the qualifier "from a pure intention". What do I mean by this? There are many souls who are infused with Charity, but tend more often than not to serve God from a motive of fear. This fear is known as servile fear. These souls mainly do God's will because they do not want to be condemned to hell. Many of these souls are saved, but only by the skin of their teeth, so to speak. The motive of servile fear is good, but not the most pleasing to God. Then there are other souls who tend to love and serve God mainly because they want to attain the joy of heaven. They want to be rewarded for serving God well. They desire to attain the degree of glory in heaven that God has willed for them because they want to enjoy the happiness that that degree brings. This motive for serving God is better and more pleasing to God than the first, but it is still not the best. No, my friends. The stuff that the saints on earth were made of was that they loved and served God solely because they desired to please Him. This is what we mean by "from a pure intention". It is the greatest motive from which we can act and thus the most pleasing to God. There is a certain selfishness to the first two motives, whereas the third motive is selfless. As a matter of fact, if we desire to save our souls it should be simply because we want to do God's will and please Him. The saints themselves did not fear the punishment of hell nor did they care to be rewarded. They simply saw God as their Father who deserves to be loved because He is Goodness Itself. Their happiness consisted in seeing God happy. This exactly is what theologians mean by "The Beatific Vision". It is the direct vision of God's perfect happiness in Himself. Seeing God perfectly happy in Himself makes the Blessed in heaven perfectly happy. It should be no surprise, then, that the Blessed in heaven would cast themselves into the fires of hell and suffer eternally if they were to know that it would give God greater pleasure. For us on earth, the fear of offending God solely because we do not want to displease Him is called filial fear - one of the Gifts of the Holy Ghost.

I hope you are now convinced that to please God from a pure intention is the ultimate purpose of our earthly existence. How then does this relate to our daily lives? Well, there are countless activities that can be done with the pure intention of pleasing God that are greater than acts that apparently seem to be more profitable, but are actually less so. For example, sweeping the floor with the sole aim of pleasing God is more meritorious than going to Mass simply to fulfill one's Sunday obligation. With this example we can understand how the merits obtained by Our Mother were greater than all the merits of all the saints put together. However, not all acts done with the pure intention of pleasing God are of equal value. Rather, acts of suffering are more meritorious than acts that do not involve suffering. Therefore, for example, suffering through a sickness is more meritorious than spending time at play with one's child when both are done with a pure intention.

Amongst God's creatures, there is no one who suffered more than Our Lady. And did not Our Lady model Herself after Her Son? And was it not the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity who showed us the way of perfection by becoming Man, living amongst us, suffering His Passion, and completely fulfilling the will of His Father? Did not God the Father announce in the Scriptures that Christ was His Son in Whom He was well pleased? We can therefore conclude that to strive to imitate Our Lord and Saviour from a pure intention, predominantly through suffering and carrying our daily crosses, is most pleasing to God.

We now ask these questions. To whom did Our Lord first imprint the Stigmata? To whom did Our Lord promise the place in heaven once reserved to Lucifer, the greatest of all the angels before his fall? For whom have many reserved the name of "the second Christ"? The answer to these questions is St. Francis of Assisi, one of the greatest saints in Church history. But why has the Seraphic Father been given such great graces? Because he lived the life of the gospel in its purity. He lived in the love and imitation of Jesus Christ solely out of the desire to please God. The motto in the above emblem, "Deus Meus et Omnia", translates as "My God and All". St. Francis would meditate all night only on these words, which demonstrates his complete love for God. The Third Order of Penance that he established flows from this spirit. It is an Order approved by Holy Mother Church, the Bride of Christ, for almost 800 years with the ultimate aim of pleasing God from a pure intention. Therefore, we can confidently conclude that to be a member of the Third Order of St. Francis is a great grace and one of the most fruitful means of serving and pleasing God.

Please do consider joining.

In the Seraphic Father.