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Offering Our Lives to God Using St. Ignatius’ Suscipe Prayer

By Fr. Nathan O’Halloran, SJ

By the end of his life, St. Ignatius of Loyola was pausing every hour to examine his thoughts, actions, and feelings. But it wasn’t because he was being overly scrupulous about his sins. This hourly examination flowed only from a place of surrender and love, which was almost childlike in its totality.

For example, even at the beginning of Mass, while walking to the altar, he would sometimes murmur, “Where do you wish to take me, Lord?” And during the Mass, he might pause to whisper, “Following you, my Lord, I shall never be lost.” Each of these small moments of self-offering in St. Ignatius’ life flowed from the grace of the Suscipe prayer (pronounced Su’-she-pay). In this prayer, we offer all our memory, understanding, and will to God, with a special emphasis on our entire will and liberty:

Take (suscipe), Lord,
and receive all my liberty,
my memory, my understanding, and my entire will,
all that I have and possess.
You have given all to me.
To you, O Lord, I return it.
All is yours, dispose of it wholly according to your will.
Give me your love and your grace,
for this is sufficient for me.

The Suscipe is a prayer of response to the great love that God has shown to each one of us. It comes at the end of Ignatius’ month-long Spiritual Exercises, in a meditation called “The Contemplation to Attain the Love of God.” St. Ignatius begins this meditation by reminding us that a “lover gives and shares with the beloved what he possesses . . . and vice versa.” This lover is, of course, God, the Divine Lover.

Ignatius then asks the reader to remember “with great affection” all that God has given to him “of what he possesses”—and even more, that God “desires to give himself to me.” In the gift of Jesus Christ, God the Lover has given to me all that he possesses. How else can I respond other than to make this offering: “Take, Lord, and receive all my liberty, . . . all that I have and possess”? As the beloved, I want to offer everything back to the Divine Lover, who has already given everything to me.

St. Ignatius made this offering so wholeheartedly that he would tell a companion near the end of his life that it would take him only about fifteen minutes to accept even the destruction of his new order, the Society of Jesus. Notice the link between the Suscipe and the Examen: Ignatius had already offered everything to God in the Suspice prayer—including the Society of Jesus. The Examen was the prayer that enabled him daily to live out that offering.

Proposals of Love to God. On the surface, it might appear as if Ignatian spirituality is rather passive, with its emphasis on surrendering our entire will and liberty. For St. Ignatius, however, the way to surrender our entire will and liberty to God does not consist in abdicating the use of our will but rather in using our will to make proposals of great love.

Think of it this way: what kind of lover wants his beloved to tell him constantly, Just tell me what to do and I’ll do it! That is the relationship of a servant to a master. How much more does a lover appreciate an offering made in love—one that comes from the heart—even if sometimes that offering needs to be rejected or modified. As a spiritual director, I have found that this insight is very freeing for many people.

The most effective way, then, of surrendering our entire will to God is to make frequent proposals of love, to begin to act on these proposals, and then to see if God will confirm our offering. It usually becomes clear rather quickly whether God will receive our proposals, whether through circumstances or by the sense we get as we pray or act on them.

Successful and Failed Offerings. For Ignatius, the Suscipe resulted in a long trail of both successful and failed offerings. Two examples from his life illustrate this point.

Following his time in Manresa, Ignatius had a strong desire to go to Jerusalem in order to be as close to the Lord as possible. It was also, in his own words, his “firm determination to remain in Jerusalem.” But the Franciscan friar who was the guardian of the holy sites just as firmly told him that he could not stay. Ignatius replied that “he had made up his mind to stay” and that “he would not give up his purpose out of any fear.”

The friar replied that he had the power to excommunicate Ignatius, and so Ignatius finally let go of his own will. He had made an offering to the Lord: to stay in Jerusalem. But through the legitimate religious authorities in Jerusalem, God made it clear that he did not receive his offering. Ignatius learned that his proposals of love were not always God’s will for him.

At another time, Ignatius made an offering, as an act of penance, to walk seventy-three miles barefoot without eating or drinking. While he was “recommending” this offering to God in prayer, he was “seized with great fear” at so difficult an undertaking, so much so that he could “hardly get his clothes on” to begin. He could have assumed that these feelings were from the good spirit and meant that he shouldn’t go, but he went ahead and started walking.

The fear and dread he felt lasted for the first several miles of his journey, and the confirmation did not come immediately. But as he began to climb a hill, “the dread began to slip from him and in its place came so great a joy and spiritual consolation, that he began to cry out through the fields and to talk to God.” These consolations made it clear to him that God was pleased with his proposal of love, and he continued walking.

Surprise Me! I’ve often thought that one of the most succinct descriptions of the Suscipe can be found in the last line of Ron Hansen’s novel, Mariette in Ecstasy:

We try to be formed and held and kept by [God], but instead he offers us freedom. And now when I try to know his will, his kindness floods me, his great love overwhelms me, and I hear him whisper, Surprise me.

We surrender our freedom by using it, by “surprising” God with proposals of love. His confirmation or rejection, in turn, will conform and mold our freedom to his will.

In other words, we make the offering to him, and his response to us guides us in living out his will.

In our day-to-day lives, our proposals of love won’t typically be as grand as going to Jerusalem or walking barefoot for miles. But each day presents opportunities to “surprise” God by making proposals of love to him, however small, and then acting on them. If for some reason we are prevented from acting on our offering, then we should surrender it to the Lord. For example, perhaps we decided to attend daily Mass, but a lengthy phone call from a distraught friend caused us to miss it. Comforting that friend may have been exactly what God had willed for us that day. Learning to discern between “goods” is the heart of Christian discipleship. We learn to follow by recognizing the signs of confirmation or redirection.

A Morning Offering. Since the Examen prayer is used at midday and night, I suggest that you pray the Suscipe prayer first thing upon waking up. A few years ago, I began this practice for myself. That’s because I had started to notice that the first thing I was doing upon awakening was checking my phone. One day in prayer, I thought, Why am I checking my phone before I’ve checked in with God?

And so I made a resolution, an offering of love to God. Now, before I do anything else, I say a prayer of offering to the Lord. Then I roll straight from the bed onto my knees (this takes some practice). This is the perfect time for the Suscipe, for making another offering to him.

Later in the day, I will check in on my faithfulness to this morning offering when I do the Examen. But for the moment, I just offer myself. I remind myself that “your love and your grace” are sufficient for me. These are all I truly need to confront my Lie today; these are all I need to live in the Truth for one more day. Then, and only then, do I pick up my phone, dress, and make coffee.

We all want to offer our lives to the Lord out of love for him and to follow him as his disciples. The Examen and the Suspice offer us tools for doing that. I pray that as you take up these practices, you will find yourself giving more and more of yourself to the Divine Lover who has already given everything to you.

From The Word Among Us (July/August 2021 Issue)

Quotations from Ignatius’ autobiography were taken from St. Ignatius’ Own Story as told to Luis Gonzalez de Camara, translated by William J. Young, SJ. Quotations from The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius were taken from the translation by Louis J. Puhl, SJ.

Fr. Nathan O’Halloran, SJ. is assistant professor of religious studies and director of the Catholic Studies Program at Loyola University New Orleans as well as a theological advisor for The Word Among Us.