God Sustains His Image in the Human Person
Although I am … unworthy and incapable of being like God, still God mercifully nourishes me with the living image of his divine substance … [and] destroys in me my unworthiness … God is in me, lives in me and operates in me. (OOCC, X, pp. 452 - 453; STA, 493)
St. Vincent Pallotti firmly believed that God created the human person in his own image and likeness. For him, a person did not merit becoming the image of God, but rather it was a privilege God bestowed on him out of God’s love for him. A person, due to his inclination towards evil, lost his focus on God and became unworthy and incapable of being God-like. God did not abandon him. But, by the redemptive merits of the Son, Jesus, God mercifully nourished him with the living image of his Godhead, in the process destroying human unworthiness and misery. According to St. Vincent, with the destruction of all that was evil in a person, God entered a person’s life and lived and acted in him. Thus, it was God who continuously sustained the image of God in each human person, in spite of the fact that he periodically lost it due to his sinfulness. But in this task of maintaining the image of God within a person, he must cooperate with God, thereby facilitating the continued presence of the image of God in him. Human cooperation with God would imply that he attempted to live his life as the image of God in his daily life.
Do I recognize God as the foundation and sustainer of the image of God in me? Do I cooperate with God in maintaining the image of God in me? What are some of the efforts I need to make in order to live as the image of God in my daily life?
My heart is glad and my soul rejoices, my body too abides in confidence; because you will not abandon my soul to the netherworld, nor will you suffer your faithful to undergo corruption. (Ps. 16: 9-10)