God's glory is the source of my life (Br. Andrew Lyons)

Life in man is the glory of God;
the life of man is the vision of God. 

--St. Irenaeus 

    [In the above statement,] Irenaeus is not saying that my life should be a source of God’s glory; he’s saying that God’s glory is the very source of my life… [When] I [first] read it, [I] thought of how I could reveal God to others through my life, but Irenaeus was trying to make me think of how God’s revelation of himself to me is my very life. In short, I thought the quote was about me; it was really about God. 

    Irenaeus [is expressing] the fundamental conviction that man comes to life when he knows God. We pray and study in order to know God, and we preach so that others also might know him. Knowing God must come first—everything else, everything that we do, comes second. 

    We still need to hear this truth today. Human nature hasn’t changed—even a devout Christian still thinks first of himself, of what he can do to glorify God. Although this is a good and holy desire, placing it first can be dangerous—it draws our eyes on ourselves rather than on God. [Instead, let us put] first what ought to be first: the contemplation of Truth, the “vision of God.” 

--Br. Andrew Lyons, O.P. 

Image source: Theophanes the Greek, The Transfiguration, detail (15th century), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feast_of_the_Transfiguration#/media/File:Transfiguration_by_Feofan_Grek_from_Spaso-Preobrazhensky_Cathedral_in_Pereslavl-Zalessky_(15th_c,_Tretyakov_gallery).jpeg
Quotation source