What do we need in life?

There are lots of things we think we “need” in life. We think we need to go to college, we need to get married, we need to have children, to have a high-paying job, to have a home, to have financial security, and to have good health. In reality, there is but ONE thing we need, and that is our salvation.

I wonder if Joachim and Anna were frustrated, perhaps even somewhat self-conscious, that they didn’t have a child. I wonder if they thought, like most people of their time, that having children in the context of a marriage was a needful thing. Yet, they never wavered in their faith. They continued to be devout followers of God through all the years they hoped to have children. They must have been elated when they were finally expecting a child. God told them that their child would be special — that she would ultimately carry the Christ. Perhaps they went to the list of needs that parents have for their children—they will need to get married, have a skill in order to have a job. They will need to go to school, have fun and make memories. I’m sure that Joachim and Anna didn’t think they wouldn’t be alive to see any of these things happen. And yet they only lived for a few years after their daughter, Mary, was born.

Most children grow up needing their parents. In childhood, parents direct everything. In adulthood, parents become more friends and consultants rather than directors. And yet the Virgin Mary, who needed parents like everyone else does, did not have them for long. She was raised in the temple, by strangers.

Most people think we need a long life, lots of friends, and a place to call home. St. John the Baptist lived alone in the wilderness, didn’t have a home, didn’t have many friends, and died at a young age.

The Virgin Mary, St. John the Baptist, Joachim and Anna—none of them had lives that we would consider ideal by the standards of modern society. They didn’t enjoy most of the things that we say we “need” in life today. Yet, they all had the ONE needful thing—a relationship with God, and a seat in the Kingdom of God.

There is nothing wrong with having goals or making achievements. There is nothing wrong with doing well in college or making a good wage at a job. What is wrong is when all of these worldly concerns cause us to forget the one needful thing, which is working our way towards the Kingdom of God.

If we are working our way towards the Kingdom of God, and if we come up short on other things, like not getting into a great college, or getting sick at a young age, if we never get married or have children, if we never own a home or go on an exotic trip, as long as we have the needful thing, we can still end up great for eternity. The needful thing in life its ultimate destination: heaven. Come up short with a few things in life and end up at the ultimate destination, Paradise, and that is the mark of a good life. Having a great life but coming up a few steps short of Paradise would be a failed life because we would have not gotten the needful thing.

There is no escaping that we all have to be “Martha” in the world. There is no escaping the struggles of Joachim and Anna for some of us. There is no escaping the challenges of the Virgin Mary or the loneliness of St. John the Baptist. Yet, we remember these people in all of our divine services because they had the one needful thing. May we always remember the one needful thing, salvation, throughout life. Salvation is the one needful thing at the end of life. In this life, the one needful thing is faith, because faith is what keeps us walking on the path to salvation especially in the times we are not getting the things the world tells us we “need.”

Keep your eyes on the prize, salvation, every day. And work on the one needful thing, faith, each day. Keep walking in faith today.

+Fr. Stavros