Ignatian First Principle and Foundation

God, who loves us, creates us and wants to share life with us forever. Our love response takes shape in our praise and honor and service of the God of our life.

All the things in this world are created because of God's love and they become a context of gifts presented to us so that we can know God more easily and make a return of love more readily.

As a result, we show reverence for all the gifts of creation and collaborate with God in using them, so that by being good stewards we develop as loving persons in our care for God's world and its development.

But if we abuse any of these gifts of creation or, on the contrary, take them as the center of our lives, we break our relationship with God and hinder our growth as loving persons.

In every day life then, we must hold ourselves in balance, before all created gifts insofar as we have a choice and are not bound by some responsibility. We should not fix our desires on health or sickness, wealth or poverty, success or failure, a long life or a short one.

For everything has the potential of calling forth in us a more loving response to our life forever with God.

Our only desire and our one choice should be this:

I want and I choose, what better leads to God's deepening life in me.

-- David L. Fleming (translating St Ignatius of Loyola)

Prayer of St. Ignatius of Loyola

Lord, teach me to be generous.

Teach me to serve you as you deserve,

To give and not to count the cost,

To fight and not to heed the wounds,

To toil and not to seek for rest,

To labor and not to ask for reward

Save that of knowing that I do your will.

Suspice (Latin for "receive")

Take, Lord, and receive all my liberty,

my memory,

my understanding,

and my entire will,

All I have and call my own.

You have given 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.

The above Suscipe prayer was popularized by St. Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Society of Jesus, who incorporated it into his Spiritual Exercises in the early sixteenth century. This prayer goes back to monastic profession, and is said to be drawn from Psalm 119.

The only real sadness,

the only real failure,

the only great tragedy in life,

is not to become a saint.

-- Leon Bloy (French Catholic)