God Loves the Human Person First

[My God] not withstanding my incomprehensible ingratitude [and] innumerable sins … You with your infinite love think of me. You love me with yourself and all your infinite attributes, properties and nature. (OOCC, X, p. 472; STA, 557)

St. Vincent Pallotti questioned a person’s ability to love God and even desiring to love God, if God had not loved him first. God, by loving the human person first, gives him the capacity to love God. Even the desire to love God should have its origin from God. Unless God reaches out to us we cannot reach out to him. By loving us first he raises us from the natural to the supernatural level of existence. Being raised to the level of God, we are able to raise the thoughts of our minds and the love of our hearts to God.  Besides, God’s loving us first is his invitation to respond to his love. A person humbly admits God’s invitation to love when he acknowledges his limitations and expresses his desire to love God in return for his love. St. Vincent Pallotti constantly lived his life with the awareness that God first loved him. Since God loved him first, he could be his true self before God, opening his misery and limitations before God. There is nothing whatsoever that St. Vincent had to hide from God, as everything in his life was open to God from the first moment of God’s love reaching him. In this manner, St. Vincent lived a life of total transparency because God’s love overshadowed him from the beginning.

Do I acknowledge that God has reached out to me in love, even before I knew of him? How do I plan to respond to the invitation to love him that is extended to me by God loving me first? Does the fact that God loves me make me a transparent and an open person?

We love because he first loved us. (I Jn. 4: 19)