The Suscipe (Take, Lord, and Receive)

The Suscipe stands at the very end of the Spiritual Exercises, in the Contemplation for Attaining Love. It is not one of the meditations of the four weeks; it is what a soul is left holding when the four weeks are done.

Its logic is severe and simple. St. Ignatius asks first for liberty — not comfort, not consolation, but the freedom to be disposed of. Then memory, understanding and will: the three powers of the soul in the Augustinian reckoning, which is to say everything a man has to call his own. Then the reason for the surrender, which is not that these things are worthless but the opposite: Quidquid habeo vel possideo, mihi largitus es — whatever I have was a gift in the first place. What is given back was never owned.

Only at the end does he ask for anything, and he asks for two things: God's love and God's grace. Et dives sum satis — and I am rich enough.

The prayer has had a long life outside the retreat house. It is prayed daily by Jesuits, and by a great many people who have never made the Exercises at all, because it says in five lines what most souls take a lifetime to mean.