The idea of seeking appears several times in the New Testament. We hear that Christ came to seek and save the lost (Lk. 19:10). We have the parable of the lost sheep where the shepherd leaves the ninety-nine sheep to seek the one that is lost (Matt. 18:12). And, of course, we have the admonition “seek and you shall find” (Matt. 7:7).
So we have the idea of seeking applied to both God and man. In order to understand human seeking, I think it is useful to begin by looking at God’s seeking. Christ’s seeking involved the incarnation, the Son of God becoming the Son of man. It also involved His journeys, His teaching, His miracles.
In the incarnation, God came to humanity. If we were to look at this from the reverse perspective, what would it mean for man to go to God? On one hand, God is the creator. All things are sustained by Him and He is “everywhere present and filling all things.” And yet, there are places and circumstances in which we encounter God in more direct and personal ways.
The first such place is the Eucharist. There, we encounter the Son of God physically. We partake of Him as we pray that He enter into “our innermost core,” to sanctify and protect us, as we say in the prayers of thanksgiving:
Grant that these may be to me for the healing of both soul and body, for the averting of everything hostile, for the enlightenment of the eyes of my heart, for the peace of the powers of my soul, for faith unashamed, for love unfeigned, for the fullness of wisdom, for the observance of Your commandments, for an increase of Your divine grace, and for abiding in Your Kingdom; that being kept by them in Your holiness I may ever be mindful of Your grace, and no longer live for myself but for You, our Master and benefactor.
Another place of close encounter with Christ is in our prayers. It is during prayer that the saints have seen the light of Christ – the same light that He showed His disciples upon Mt. Tabor. But even if we do not encounter Him so closely, the act of prayer itself is an act of communion with Christ. Here it should be said that prayer itself is something that we seek and strive for. We are taught to pray attentively and unhurriedly, but that takes practice and patience to achieve. So we can say that we seek Christ by seeking to learn how to pray without disctraction.
One final place that I will mention here is that we can seek Christ in our neighbor. As we are all created in His image and likeness, the struggle to see Christ in those around us, to treat them as icons even when – or especially when – that icon is hard to distinguish, can lead us to encounters with Christ.
There are, of course, other places where we can encounter Christ: He can reveal Himself to us in the beauty of a flower or a song, in the majesty of a mountain, or the vastness of the universe. However, in any and all of these places, seeking God implies having a singular focus on Him. As Archimandrite Aimilianos said in The Way of the Spirit, it is possible to view things as ends in themselves, or to make ancillary things the main thing. In that case even good things like monasticism, prayer, or liturgy will not lead us to Christ.
So let us seek Christ with a love and dedication worthy of His love and dedication as He seeks us and our salvation.