First Point - Where were you one hundred years ago? In nothingness. Who has drawn you out of it? God, who, by a preference that you have not at all merited, has created you to His own image and likeness. For what end have you been created? To glorify God, to know and to serve Him, to do His holy will and to keep His commandments. We glorify God by knowing and by loving Him; we give testimony of our love by serving Him; we serve Him by keeping His commandments.
Second Point - God need not have created you, but since He has created you, He must, of necessity, be your first beginning and your last end. Just as it would be impossible for you to be a man without having a body and a soul, so it would be impossible for you to be a man without having the obligation of serving God. All-powerful as God is, even He cannot dispense with that obligation. True it is that, without releasing you from the obligation, God gives you the freedom of will to observe His law or to transgress it; but how fatal, how pernicious is that freedom, if you do not make use of it according to God's holy will.
Third Point - To serve God, then, is the one thing necessary of which the Saviour speaks. It is not necessary for you to be great, or rich, or learned, but it is necessary for you to serve God. It is not necessary for you to be in this or that state, or to have this or that responsibility, but it is necessary for you to serve God in whatever state you may be. It is not necessary for you to have health, or pleasures, or talents, but it is necessary for you to attribute them all to God, should they be yours. To love and serve God should be the goal of all your ambitions and the end of all your actions. Every one should live entirely for God. But alas! how many go out of this world without knowing the purpose of their creation, and how many who have known it, have lived as though they knew it not. Are you of this number?
Say often to yourself: Why am I in this world? For what end has God created me? Should I not be ashamed that I have lived up to this time as though I were ignorant of the end of my creation?
Fear God and keep his commandments; for this is all man. - Ecclesiastes 12:13
True liberty consists in serving God through love and not through necessity. - Saint Augustine of Hippo
- text taken from Meditations for Every Day in a Month, by Father François Nepveu