Correspondence: The Human Response to God’s Gift of Jesus
[Always] try, assisted by divine grace, to correspond exactly to such graces with all the powers of your soul and the senses of your body. (OOCC, X, p. 49; STA, 221)
St. Vincent Pallotti, having received Jesus, the gift of the Father, wanted to respond to God in gratitude. For St. Vincent, the best way to be grateful to God was to accept the very life of Jesus as his own and live it in the best way possible. In other words, there must be a correspondence between the life of Jesus and that of St. Vincent. Such a correspondence would not be possible if it was not done in and through Jesus, because only through the mediation of Jesus, could he live a life of correspondence to that of Jesus. According to St. Vincent, the acceptance of the mediation of Jesus consisted of opening himself to God’s grace, which was the gift of Jesus to him. When St. Vincent opened himself to the grace of God with all the powers of his soul, mind and body, Jesus would destroy in him everything that would prevent the proper correspondence and make him act as Jesus acted. Thus, all the energies of St. Vincent were focused on imitating Jesus, thereby offering to the Father the perfect correspondence to the life of Jesus in gratitude for the Father’s gift of Jesus to him.
How do I respond to the Father for the gift of Jesus, his Son, to me? Is my response one of correspondence to the life of Jesus? Do I accept the mediation of Jesus in my reaching out to the Father in gratitude? Am I open to the grace of God in my imitation of Jesus?
You were taught to put away your former way of life, your old self… and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to clothe yourselves with the new self, created according to the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness. (Eph. 4: 22 – 24)