Take Lord, and receive
all my liberty,
my memory,
my understanding,
and my entire will --
all that I have and call my own.
You have given it
all to me.
To you, Lord,
I return it.
Everything is yours;
do with it
what you will.
Give me only your love
and your grace.
That is enough
for me.
--St. Ignatius of Loyola
This prayer - sometimes titled "Suscipe" (Latin for 'receive') - comes at the very end of the Spiritual Exercises during the Contemplation to Attain Greater Love. And I have been fascinated with this prayer for awhile. All we have belongs ultimately not to us but to the One who has encompassed us in a loving, giving embrace. What is interesting to consider is that this embrace is ongoing, continuous. I was once on retreat and I told someone that I couldn't 'feel' God loving me. He looked at me and said, well, don't you think that its not something you can really feel if it is always happening? If its all you know, its easy to take it for granted. Certainly, the Christian life is about coming to consciousness of this love and to make it a practice daily to acknowledge that all we have received is gift and that truly receiving it means to use these gifts for God's greater glory. And even more obvious, this is an ongoing task that remains challenging because our example of perfect gratitude is Christ and that is an admittedly difficult act to follow.
All of this is to say that towards the end of my time, I am grateful for my work with ISN and even more so for the work ISN does as an organization. Our work with the Jesuit parishes, although seminal, is an effort to contribute to a great organization with a vision for how to join with one another in the service of faith and the pursuit of justice. To use an Ignatian buzzword - this work has been something that contributes to the Magis - the more. Sometimes, this word is misconceived as an attempt do more, almost for the sake of doing more. However, it is more subtle - it is modelling ourselves after St. Ignatius to always seek the greater glory of God (one finds the Latin translation of this throughout the Jesuit world: ad majorem Dei gloriam). Seeking the magis is responding to the call of the kingdom, to discern continually where God is calling us to name the grace present in the world. For ISN, this occurs in many areas, but our work with parishes is the particular niche in which I have helped with the discernment process.
I think a further insight to be made is that the Magis is a group activity - the kingdom is a collective and collaborative effort. And so with the Jesuit parishes, ISN asks: what should we be doing as an Ignatian family to strengthen parish life and social ministry? How can Ignatian spirituality serve as a guide to our discernment? What have others within the tradition offered that can help us discern the scope and possibilities of parish work? What can we offer together that will be for the greater glory of God? For the greater awareness of God's glory among those within the Church and the world? Finally, what can each parish do locally and globally to participate in this work of the Spirit?
Answering these questions in the concrete will mean collaborating together in pursuit of the Magis. In the words of a respondent to a survey ISN sent out about interest in a stronger Jesuit parish network: "I believe a stronger network with other churches would provide moral support--the sense that we are all in this together, and we're not each a lone voice on the fringe of the establishment. We could provide each other with the courage and resources to address the same issues in a respectful yet challenging manner and feel the weight of our combined forces."
With Ignatius, we pray:
You have given it
all to us.
To you, Lord,
We return it.
Everything is yours;
do with it
what you will.
Give us only your love
and your grace.
That is enough
for us.
Amen.
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