One of David’s most stunning statements is found in Ps. 63:
Because your steadfast love is better than life, my lips will praise you. (Ps. 63:3 ESV)
Of all David might possess, what means the most is the steadfast love of God. Living in this love is the only living David longs for. Without this love, there is no real living.
This is the reality Paul points to when he talks of us being “rooted and grounded in love” (Eph. 3:17). This love of God, this love that makes life worth living, is something we can be deeply rooted in and firmly grounded in. This love can become the source of unimaginable satisfaction even when life is unsatisfactory.
How then do you experience this reality? One challenging, yet very fruitful practice that leads toward this is Suscipe. Suscipe is a prayer recommended by St. Ignatius of Loyola. In the sixteenth century he wrote his Spiritual Exercises and urged the praying of this prayer as a way of contemplating the love of God.
His “Contemplation on the Love of God” is the concluding meditation of the Exercises (Spiritual Exercises, 231–237). It presents a God who loves without limit and who invites us to make a generous response of love in return.The contemplation invites reflection on four themes:1) Reflection on God’s gifts to us (life, family, friends, faith, church, eternal life); 2) God’s self-giving in Jesus; 3) God’s continuing work in the world; and 4) The limitless quality of God’s love. In many ways, the Spiritual Exercises points to and finds its sum in these final meditations. Truly grasping God’s love is what the exercises are all about.
Suscipe, then, is the culmination of this final contemplation. That is, Ignatius believed that the repetition of these words would shape us and form us into people who more deeply understood the love of God and lived into the love of God. The word “suscipe” or “take/ receive” is the first word in the Latin translation of the prayer:
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 most fruit-producing lines are the final two: “Give me only your love and your grace, that is enough for me.” These lines urge us to say, and to believe what we say, that God’s love is enough. God’s love is better than anything else we might have in life. The rest of the prayer is our daily (it is to be prayed daily) practice of turning over everything else we have in life and professing (and then, hopefully experiencing) that if we have God’s love, we have enough. We need nothing else. Absolutely nothing.
I pray this prayer every morning, along with the Lord’s Prayer. To be honest, there have been seasons when I stopped praying it. It was too painful. So much had been taken from me that I wasn’t sure I could say, “Give me only your love and your grace, that is enough for me.” But I returned to it. I find it deeply formative, this daily reminder that no matter what I do not have, as long as I have his love, I have enough.
In this time of Covid-19, when so much is being taken from us, I urge you to engage in this spiritual practice. Memorize these words and pray them each day. Learn to let God’s love be enough.
