In what is called the Autograph edition of The Spiritual Exercises, that is, the edition written in Spanish and used continually by Ignatius himself until 1548, “The Contemplation to Attain Love” (Contemplación para alcanzar amor) is not listed under the heading of the Fourth Week. Nowhere are there indications in the actual text about where this exercise is to be used.149 Be that as it may, it is usual for the retreatant to spend the last day of the retreat on this contemplation, and it is particularly appropriate for this time. But it is, in fact, a contemplation that can be prayed at any time in the days, months, and years after the retreat.
I would like to pause for a moment with the title itself. Various versions are suggested in different editions, the most common being “Contemplation to Attain the Love of God.” Now, there are two meanings of “the love of God” here. The first is God’s love for us, which is absolute and unconditional. We do not have to attain this, because we already have it. The retreatant who has just completed the entire Spiritual Exercises, with the graces prayed for and received throughout, will have experienced a felt knowledge of this love. We are asked to contemplate here the way God loves us, the way God teaches us to love. The model of this love is, of course, the compassionate, all-forgiving, self-emptying love of Jesus. It is the love of the One who died “for me” on the Cross and which has been made manifest in the joy, hope, and consolation that God gives to us in the Resurrection of Jesus.
The second meaning of the title refers to our love for God, the love that we hope to attain in imitation of his. The Spanish word alcanzar means “to reach” or “to catch up with.” Of course, our imitation of the way God loves us will always be imperfect, but at least we can ask ourselves, in typical Ignatian fashion, if we really want our lives to be an imitation of Christ’s. Do we even desire to love in God’s way, as revealed to us in Jesus?
Ignatius has a preliminary note to this exercise in which he makes two points:
“First, it is well to remark two things: the first is that love ought to be put more in deeds than in words. The second, love consists in interchange between 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, on the contrary, the beloved to the lover. So that if the one has knowledge, he gives to the one who has not. The same of honours, of riches; and so the one to the other” (230, 231).
In the first point, Ignatius says that action is the defining characteristic of love. His burning desire was to love and serve God and others in all things, and that meant active engagement. In the second point, Ignatius points out that genuine love between two people tends towards a mutual sharing. People who are in love will want to share with each other whatever gifts they have. There is no place in love for selfish hoarding, but, on the contrary, there is a spontaneous desire to share all. We can see this clearly in the case of a newly married couple whose love is genuine and who exchange vows of total commitment to each other until death.
Ignatius has a rather solemn opening to this contemplation. He invites us to imagine ourselves standing before God and the whole court of heaven, who are interceding for us at this moment (232).
The grace to be prayed for is worth noting: “It will be here to ask for interior knowledge of so great good received, in order that being entirely grateful, I may be able to love and serve his divine Majesty” (233). Notice the progression in this prayer, from interior knowledge (not just head knowledge) to gratitude, to love, and finally to service. We are asking to grow in loving the way God loves. Ignatius attached immense importance to gratitude in our lives; in one of his letters, he says that, in his view, ingratitude is the most abominable of sins.
We are then asked to call to mind all the gifts we have received, including the gifts of creation and redemption in Christ. We are to “ponder with much feeling,” all the gifts we have received from God in our personal histories (234). We are to think of the “particular gifts” we have received, those special to us. Undoubtedly, if we have just completed the Spiritual Exercises, the graces we have received during the retreat will come readily to mind. Ignatius is at pains here to stress that God is a God who gives. Indeed, God desires to give even more to us, if only we are open and available to receive. We can take so much for granted in our daily living. It is only when we stop “to ponder” on all the gifts we have received that we can develop an attitude of gratitude, out of which will grow a desire to make a generous response to God’s daily gifting to us. Ignatius then suggests that we make a self-offering, using the following words “with much feeling”:
Take, Lord, and receive all my liberty, my memory, my understanding, and all my will—all that I have and possess. You, Lord, have given all to me. To you, Lord, I now return it. All is yours. Dispose of it only according to your will. Give me only your love and your grace for this is enough for me (234).
This is the famous prayer of St. Ignatius which is always sung at Mass when Jesuits are making their first or final vows. It is an extraordinary prayer, a prayer of radical self-offering, and one that is not to be said lightly. It is a dedication of our personal freedom and everything we are and possess to God and to God’s will. Arising out of the experience of the Spiritual Exercises, it is a self-conscious and total offering of the self to God. This, of course, has been the whole objective of the Spiritual Exercises.
When I read this prayer, I invariably think of Pedro Arrupe, who was superior general of the Jesuits from 1965 to 1983 and who spent his whole life in the spirit of that prayer. He was a man with great gifts of intellect, creativity, leadership, and personal sanctity, who could speak numerous languages. Suddenly, in 1981, he was struck down with an almost totally debilitating stroke, after which he lived on for another ten years in the Jesuit infirmary in Rome, barely able to communicate with his brother Jesuits. God had taken away his liberty, memory, and will, indeed all he possessed. And what an inspiration Fr. Arrupe was to the rest of us Jesuits, as he lived on in that enfeebled state! He personified in himself the meaning of that prayer.
Ignatius then asks us to “look on how God dwells in creatures, in the elements, giving them being, in the plants vegetating, in the animals feeding in them, in people giving them to understand; and so in me, giving me being, animating me, giving me sensation and making me to understand” (235). Ignatius lived in a “divine milieu” and wants us to do the same. Every creature becomes a reflection and proclamation of the divine grandeur. Everything is a means of encounter and union with God. We might remember the opening lines of Gerard Manley Hopkins’s poem “God’s Grandeur”: “The world is charged with the grandeur of God.” As a Jesuit, Hopkins captures exactly the spirit of this contemplation. Remembering this divinely charged milieu in which we live and move and have our being, Ignatius then invites us to say once again, “Take, Lord, and receive . . .”
Next, we are to consider how God “works and labours” for us in all creation, in the dynamic of the material world. Here, once again, we are reminded that God is, for Ignatius, a God who “labours.” We have come across this idea many times in the text of the Spiritual Exercises. As we see in the contemplation of the Incarnation, the Trinity itself is intimately involved and concerned with the affairs of the world, and Jesus continually “labours” on our behalf (102). Ignatius’s God is a busy God. Once again, we are invited to repeat the prayer “Take, Lord, and receive . . .”
Finally, we are led to see God as the source of all gifts. God bestows gifts abundantly; God is present in all these gifts; God works for us in all of them. And, ultimately, they all lead us back to God, because they all “descend from above . . . as the rays of light descend from the sun, and as the waters flow from their fountains” (237). With even greater fervour, perhaps, we are moved to say once again the prayer “Take, Lord, and receive. . . .”
To find God in all things, a central concern of Ignatius, means contemplating God, loving God, and serving God in the love and service of others. It is to be contemplative in action.
I trust now that you will see why this contemplation can be made at any time. How aware are we that we are living in a sacramental world, a divine milieu? Ignatius certainly was. We are told that as he looked up to the heavens and saw the stars at night, the tears would trickle down his face in awe at the majesty of God’s creation.
I conclude this chapter with some lines by the Victorian poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning:
Earth’s crammed with heaven
And every common bush ablaze with God.
But only he who sees takes off his shoes.
The rest sit around and pluck blackberries.