+ In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

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Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful and kindle in them the fire of your love. Send forth your Spirit and they shall be created. And You shall renew the face of the earth.

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O, God, who by the light of the Holy Spirit, did instruct the hearts of the faithful, grant that by the same Holy Spirit we may be truly wise and ever enjoy His consolations, Through Christ Our Lord, Amen.

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St. Ignatius of Loyola: pray for us.

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Introduction

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Note.

First, it is well to remark two things: the first is that love should be put more in deeds than in words.

The second, love consists in interchange between the two parties; that is to say, in the lover’s giving and communicating to the beloved what he has or out of what he has or can; and so, and vice versa, the beloved to the lover. So that if the one has knowledge, he gives to the one who has it not. The same of honors, of riches; and so the one to the other.

 

Preparatory Prayer: “the preparatory prayer is to ask grace of God our Lord that all my intentions, actions and operations may be directed purely to the service and praise of His Divine Majesty”.

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Composition of Place: which is here to see how I am standing before God our Lord, and of the Angels and of the Saints interceding for me.

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Petition: to ask for what I want. It will be here to ask for interior knowledge of so great good received, in order that being entirely grateful, I may be able in all to love and serve His Divine Majesty.

 

Corpus of the Meditation

 

This is our closing meditation for the exercises that we have been making. It is on the contemplation for obtaining divine love. Throughout the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius there is one continuous subject: the love of God. St. Ignatius wants us to concentrate on the love of God. Why does St. Ignatius propose us this contemplation?

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• -First, to obtain a deeper understanding of what love means;

• -Second, to examine how God loves us and therefore how we should love God accordingly in return;

• -Third, to take us to the peak of the mountain of this spiritual exercises: the prayer, Suscipe or “Take, O Lord and Receive”.

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I. The Meaning of Love

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Love is to be recognised in deeds. Love is interior in its source, but if it is true love, it will show itself in action. What is the meaning of love? Love is shown in deeds and shown especially in the conformity of the lover with the beloved.

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The lover, in St. Ignatius’ words, gives and shares with the beloved what he has, and so does the beloved. Love gives, love shares. Between lover and beloved there is a mutual exchange of goods. Both lover and beloved benefit from each other.

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But, what happen when we give God something? Whatever we give to God does not enrich Him in any way. God is infinite. He has a fullness of all the Divine Perfections. God not only has wisdom; He is Wisdom. He not only has beauty; He is infinite Beauty. He not only has power; He is Omnipotence.

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Consequently, when we speak, and let’s be clear, when we speak of being generous to God, what does it really mean? Is God obtaining a certain benefit from our friendship and service? The word generosity does not mean that we somehow enrich God or give Him something which He lacks. It is here that the mystery of the Incarnation takes on such profound meaning.

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Once God became man, we can literally give Him, give God, our love. When Christ on the cross said, ‘I thirst’, it was indeed God speaking but He was speaking in human language. God became man in order to thirst for our love.

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If I love God, the whole beneficiary in loving Him, is me. I exist and I was made for one purpose: to love God.

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II. Growing in the Love of God

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Our love for God will grow in the measure of our gratitude to God. What are we saying? We are saying and all the great minds of Christian history have attested to this principle, the foundation of love is gratitude.

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That is why, if we are to grow in our love for God, and be inspired to love Him and love Him more, we must grow in our awareness of His goodness, and not just his goodness in the abstract. No. The measure of my constant awareness of God’s goodness to me, day after day, hour after hour, minute after minute, moment after moment, in that measure I will grow in my love for God.

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Where - you might ask -, where shall we begin? Where to start to estimate the gifts that we received from the divine goodness? Call to mind the blessings of creation and redemption, and the special favours you have received.

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Among the blessings of creation, I want to stress the importance of recognising the freedom of God. God is a free agent. God is free: free to create or not create. God was free to create either this world or another world. God was free to create me or create someone else instead of me. How blind, how poor blind we can be in not seeing the absolute, total, freedom of God in creating each one of us.

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Among the blessings of redemption, I would just mention his intention: to give Himself to me. God became man and wants me to receive Him in Holy Communion. Friends love to be together, right?

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And here’s the painful conclusion of all we are saying: why? why? why has God been so generous to me? Why is He still to be more generous than ever? So that I, by realising his goodness to me, out of my gratitude, might give myself entirely, completely, totally to Him.

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So you must realise God’s goodness to you. And then, what to do? Pray and ask God to increase your capacity for loving Him more. The one obtaining a benefit will be you. And then… you will want to give and give and give and give and give…

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What a difference between doing something, well because, God wants it and doing something because I love God. Of course, there is such a thing as doing what God wants and doing it, the job externally looks the same, but God knows the difference. God wants our hearts.

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God became man in order to add one more dimension to His love for us: God wanted to suffer out of love for us, and that in the last analysis, this is the unexplainable and unspeakable divine motive for the Incarnation. Should I say it? I will: Love wants to suffer, do you hear me? Love wants to suffer for the one He loves.

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Shall we do the same for Him?

 

III. Suscipe

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“Take, Lord, and receive all my liberty, my memory, my intellect, and all my will -all that I have and possess. You gave it to me: to you, Lord, I return it! All is yours, dispose of it according to all your will. Give me your love and grace, for this is enough for me”.

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It comes in three parts. This is the crowning point, not just of the Spiritual Exercises; this is the peak of the spiritual life.

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Part One: “Receive, O Lord, all my liberty. Take my memory, my understanding and my entire will.”

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What are we telling God? We are telling God to take back what He gave us, but notice where we begin, ‘Receive, O Lord, all my liberty’ and the key word is all, all my liberty.

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Our freewill has two kinds of power; it has the power of giving itself, of giving the freewill itself to God. But also, this same freedom has the power to command all the other powers of body and soul. I cannot tell you how critically important in the spiritual life is the power of human freedom to command all the other faculties of body and soul. By giving God my entire will, I will be moving every single potency of my being: my intelligence, my interior senses, my external senses, all…

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Part Two: “Take, Lord, and receive… all that I have and possess”. What are we saying here? What are we offering God? Take Lord everything that I have. Take it all.

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Part Three: what do I ask? It is here especially here, that our true love for God is manifest. It is one thing to tell God, ‘Lord, I’m giving you everything’, and it is something else to close the “Suscipe” by telling God: ‘all I want from you is your love and your grace, having but these I am rich enough and ask for nothing more’.

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In our lives God sometimes may allow us to be deprived of some possessions, things that we have enjoyed… but if we are really, really, I’ll say it once more, if we are really in love with God, all we are gonna ask Him, will be his Love, will be his grace. Only.

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All that God wants from us is our love; which means our wills surrendered to His divine will.

 

Colloquy

 

We can finish with a colloquy with our Lord.