But the Catechism adds a second phrase to its formulation of our chief end: ‘to enjoy him forever.’ At first it is difficult to see how these two phrases fit together. The first is theocentric, but the second appears to be anthropocentric. The first is distinctly biblical, but the second sounds rather like the goal of pleasure in secular teleological ethics.
It helps to notice, however, that even the second phrase is centered on God. We are not to enjoy ourselves, but to enjoy him. So the second phrase calls us to find our chief enjoyment in God, not in the world. To embrace the enjoyment of God as the goal of life is to sing with Asaph:
Whom have I in heaven but you?
And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you.
My flesh and my heart may fail,
but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.
For behold, those who are far from you shall perish;
you put an end to everyone who is unfaithful to you.
But for me it is good to be near God;
I have made the Lord GOD my refuge,
that I may tell of all your works. (Ps. 73:25-28)
Although Asaph uses forms of the first person pronoun ten times in this passage, and thirty-three times in the whole psalm, these verses are profoundly theocentric. So when the Catechism moves from the first phrase to the second, it is not moving form God-centeredness to man-centeredness. Rather, it is looking at God-centeredness from two perspectives.
John Frame, Doctrine of the Christian Life, 303f.