God Preserves Every Good in the Human Person
My God … you still sustain me with your infinite mercy. Indeed you communicate your graces to me, give me your lights, enrich me with your gifts … you seek me at all times … you wish to transform me completely in you, because you wish to make me as blessed as you. (OOCC, X, p. 252; STA, 548)
God created the human person as the crown of creation. He was made a little less than the angels; crowned with honor and glory. After the creation of the human being, God found him to be good. Thus, he was created with every form of good in him. Though he deviated from the goodness God had placed on him by his disobedience, God did not let him down. He restored his goodness by the redemptive act of Jesus and continues to preserve this goodness in the human person. St. Vincent Pallotti believed that it was God who sustained the goodness in him. God, with his infinite mercy, preserved the goodness in him by the communication of various graces and blessings. God filled him with right insights and enriched him with his gifts. St. Vincent’s experience was that God went after him and sought him whenever he tended to go astray. For God desired to transform him completely in order that he would possess the goodness of God himself. Acceptance of this truth and living by it helped St. Vincent to take care to live a good life, for he knew that he was never alone in his endeavor to make himself a good person and this world a better place.
Do I believe that God in creating me placed his goodness in me? Do I recognize the role of God in preserving goodness in me? Do I make constant effort to preserve the goodness God has placed in me? Do I cooperate with God in making myself a good person and this world a better place?
Withhold not, O Lord, your compassion from me; may your kindness and truth ever preserve me. (Ps. 40: 12)