“Seeking the Face of God: The Soul’s Ascent into the Light of Divine Presence”

The phrase “to seek the face of God” runs like a golden thread through Scripture and the writings of the saints. It is not a mere metaphor for prayer but the very heart of the spiritual life, the soul’s longing for communion and transformation. To seek the face of God is to turn the deepest part of one’s being toward the mystery of divine presence, a presence at once hidden and near, terrible and tender, that both purifies and illumines the heart.

In the Psalms, this desire is voiced with an almost aching intimacy: “My heart has said of You, ‘Seek His face.’ Your face, Lord, I will seek. Hide not Your face from me” (Psalm 26:8–9, Grail Translation). To seek the face of God is to seek His personal presence, His countenance shining upon us. It is to move beyond merely knowing about God to desiring to see Him, not with the eyes of the body but with the eyes of a purified heart. “Let the light of Your face shine on us, O Lord” (Psalm 4:7). The face of God signifies His favor, His mercy, His light. Yet, it also signifies judgment, for to encounter His face means to stand in truth. Thus the prophets cry, “Seek the Lord and His strength; seek His face always” (Psalm 104:4). To seek Him is to live in continual repentance, ever turning the soul toward His gaze.

The Desert Fathers understood this as the essence of the monastic calling. Abba Moses said, “The man who has seen his sin is greater than the one who has seen angels.” For the Fathers, the face of God could only be sought in humility and purity of heart. The one who would see God must first see himself as he truly is. When the heart is cleansed of passions, then the light of God dawns within as from behind a veil. Abba Arsenius, when asked the meaning of his silence, replied, “Flee, be silent, and pray always, for these are the roots of sinlessness.” In that silence, the mind descends into the heart, and there, in stillness, the soul beholds the light of the divine face reflected as in a mirror.

St. John Climacus in The Ladder calls the vision of God “the summit of prayer,” where the intellect stands before the uncreated Light. But he warns that this is not attained through effort alone. “The man who wishes to see the face of God in prayer must make himself deaf and blind to all things,” he writes, meaning that every attachment, even to holy thoughts, must yield to pure attention to God Himself. The seeker must pass through darkness, through unknowing, through the purgation of the heart, until prayer becomes a simple and wordless gaze of love.

St. Isaac the Syrian deepens this mystery by speaking of the hiddenness of God’s face as a gift of mercy. Were we to see Him in His fullness, he says, we would be consumed by the fire of His holiness. Thus God veils His face through trials, delays, and silence, that our desire might be strengthened and our love purified. The very absence of God becomes a form of His presence, a pedagogical concealment that teaches the heart to yearn without measure. “Love that is tested by delay,” St. Isaac writes, “becomes stronger and more unshakeable.” To seek His face is to persevere through this divine hiddenness until love itself becomes vision.

Among modern elders, this theme shines with the same ancient clarity. St. Silouan the Athonite heard the Lord say to him, “Keep your mind in hell and despair not.” To seek the face of God, for him, was to dwell in repentance so deep that pride is utterly burned away, and only love remains. “The soul that has known God’s love,” he said, “seeks Him night and day, for the remembrance of Him gives joy.” His disciple, St. Sophrony of Essex, explained that to behold the face of Christ is to know Him as personal and living, to encounter Him not as an idea but as the radiant center of all existence. “The face of the Lord is the Light of the Godhead,” he wrote, “and this Light is love.”

Archimandrite Zacharias Zacharou, in continuity with these elders, describes this as the work of the heart learning to live in the remembrance of the countenance of Christ. To seek His face is to stand before Him in unceasing prayer, allowing His gaze to shape us, expose us, and heal us. The remembrance of His face becomes the soul’s atmosphere, the hidden dialogue that transforms every thought into communion. “When we remember the Lord,” he writes, “we dwell in His presence, and the remembrance of His countenance sanctifies our heart.”

Thus, to seek the face of God is not to strive for some mystical vision detached from life. It is to live every moment in repentance, thanksgiving, and love. It is to allow every joy and sorrow, every silence and struggle, to draw the heart deeper into the mystery of divine presence. It is to desire nothing more than to see Him and to be seen by Him, for in that gaze lies salvation itself. “We shall be like Him,” says the Apostle John, “for we shall see Him as He is” (1 John 3:2).

The Fathers would say that to seek His face is to pray without ceasing, to keep one’s heart turned always toward that uncreated Light that both wounds and heals. In this seeking the soul is refined like gold in fire. It learns that the vision of God is given not to those who conquer but to those who endure, not to the wise but to the broken-hearted. The pure of heart, says Christ, shall see God. And those who see His face will find that His image has been shining in them all along, hidden beneath the dust, waiting for the gaze of love to restore its radiance.