Dear Therese,

Our free will and Gods providence are a mystery: we find it difficult to imagine what it must be like to be God and even more so to figure out what goes on in his mind. One thing we do know but still only understand on the surface is that God is love.

So, even if he sees we are not going to cooperate, he still cannot bring himself to hold back from offering us what is best for us, which is his will. But there is something else too, we would have no opportunity to convert and repent if he cut down his will to what we are willing to do. So it can happen that a person rejects his vocation, but then repents and turns back to God, and so God is able to save his soul, even though that man did not follow Gods original plan. Sometimes we repent in time to return to Gods original plan, and other times we dont. However, the path to being a saint is never closed to us unless we voluntarily and consistently reject it. God did not want Adam to sin, but once he did, God sent his Son to die for us and redeem us and that is why the liturgy goes so far as to say about Adams sin, O happy fault that merited such a savior! That certainly is a mystery!

God bless.