The Suscipe: St. Ignatius's Prayer of Radical Surrender

You want to know what's truly countercultural in our age of optimization, personal branding, and ruthless self-actualization? Try giving everything away. Not just your money—though that too. But your liberty, your memory, your understanding, your entire will. Everything you have and are.

That's exactly what St. Ignatius of Loyola asks God to take in the Suscipe, the prayer that concludes his Spiritual Exercises. It's a prayer of total surrender, and it's possibly the most radical thing you can pray in a culture built on control, accumulation, and the myth of the self-made person.

The Prayer Itself

First, let's see the prayer in its original Latin. Ignatius was a Basque nobleman turned soldier turned mystic, and he wrote in the language of the Church:

And here's a standard English translation:

Read that slowly. Let it sink in. This isn't a metaphor. This isn't spiritual poetry meant to make you feel warm and fuzzy. This is Ignatius saying: Take it all. I want nothing but you.

"Take, Lord, and Receive All My Liberty"

We start with liberty—freedom, autonomy, the ability to choose. In a culture that treats personal freedom as the highest good, Ignatius leads with its surrender.

This is the heart of the modern project: the autonomous self, beholden to no one, defined by its choices, free to construct its own meaning and identity. It's the air we breathe. We don't even question it anymore.

But Ignatius knows something we've forgotten: unlimited autonomy isn't freedom. It's slavery to the self, to our whims, to the marketplace of desires that advertisers and algorithms know how to manipulate better than we know ourselves.

True freedom, the freedom of the children of God, comes from alignment with the will of the One who made us. Not as robots, but as lovers who trust that the Beloved knows what's best for us better than we do.

So Ignatius offers his liberty first. Before anything else. The thing we'd most want to keep, he gives away first.

"My Memory, My Understanding, and My Entire Will"

Then comes the faculties of the soul: memory, understanding, will. These are the things that make us us. Our past, our capacity to know, our ability to choose.

Memory: Not just what we remember, but how we remember it. The narrative we tell ourselves about who we are, where we've been, what we've survived, what we've achieved. Our identity is built on memory. Ignatius offers it all.

Understanding: Our intellect, our knowledge, our ability to figure things out. In an age that worships expertise and credentials, that measures worth by SAT scores and degrees, Ignatius says: Take it. It's yours anyway.

Will: The faculty of choice, of self-determination. The thing that makes us moral agents. Ignatius doesn't just trim his will to align with God's—he hands the whole thing over.

This is total war on the ego. There's nothing left to cling to. No achievement to point to, no identity to defend, no plan to protect. Just: Here. It's all yours. Do with it what you will.

"All I Have and Call My Own"

And if that weren't enough, Ignatius adds: Oh, and all my stuff too.

Not just the interior life—the exterior one. Not just who you are, but what you have. Your possessions, your relationships, your status, your accomplishments, your potential. Everything you have and everything you call your own—even the things you wrongly claim as yours alone.

This hits different when you remember that Ignatius came from minor nobility. He had status, prospects, a military career. He gave it all up after a conversion experience while recovering from a cannonball wound to the legs. He spent years begging, living in caves, founding what would become the Society of Jesus.

He wasn't theorizing. He had actually done this. The prayer comes from lived experience.

"You Have Given All to Me"

Here's the theological foundation: everything you have is gift. Your life? Gift. Your talents? Gift. Your family? Gift. Your next breath? Gift.

We didn't earn existence. We didn't merit the Incarnation. We can't claim credit for grace. It's all unmerited, freely given, pure gift from a God who didn't need to create anything at all but chose to create you, specifically, out of an overflow of love.

"What do you have that you did not receive? And if you did receive it, why do you boast as though you did not?" - 1 Corinthians 4:7

This is the antidote to the meritocracy lie. The belief that you deserve what you have because you worked hard, because you're smart, because you made good choices. Even if all that's true (and luck plays a far bigger role than we admit), you didn't give yourself the capacity for hard work, intelligence, or good judgment. You received it.

And if it's all gift, then the appropriate response isn't pride or possessiveness. It's gratitude. And the fruit of gratitude is generosity—giving it all back to the Giver.

"To You, Lord, I Return It"

The Latin here is restituo—to restore, to give back what belongs to another. It's not a sacrifice in the sense of losing something that was yours. It's returning something to its rightful owner.

Like a kid giving their parent back the allowance to buy them a birthday present. Sweetly absurd. God doesn't need our stuff. He made the universe. But He delights in the offering because it represents the orientation of our hearts.

This is why Christian stewardship isn't ultimately about percentages or budgets. It's about recognizing that we're not owners, we're stewards. We're managers of Someone Else's property, entrusted with resources for a time, accountable for how we use them.

Everything is on loan. The job is to return it in better condition than we received it—and ultimately, to return it completely.

"Everything Is Yours; Do With It What You Will"

Total surrender of control. Not my will, but yours be done.

This is the prayer of Gethsemane. It's the fiat of Mary. It's what every saint has prayed in one form or another: I trust you. More than I trust myself. More than I trust my plans. Do what you will.

It's terrifying. Because what if God's will is suffering? What if it's obscurity? What if it's the cross?

Well... probably. Christ promised we'd have trouble in this world. He promised to be with us in it, not to exempt us from it. The lives of the saints are full of martyrdom, misunderstanding, and profound suffering.

But they're also full of joy. The kind that doesn't depend on circumstances. The kind that can sing hymns in prison, forgive executioners, find meaning in suffering, and face death without fear.

"Give Me Only Your Love and Your Grace"

After surrendering everything, Ignatius asks for only two things: love and grace. Not success. Not comfort. Not recognition. Not even virtue or holiness (though those flow from grace). Just love and grace.

Your love—not the world's love, not human approval, not even self-love in the therapeutic sense. God's love. The love that cast the stars, knit you together in the womb, became flesh for you, died for you, and will never, ever let you go.

And your grace—the supernatural assistance that makes the Christian life possible. Because we can't do this on our own. We can't love like Christ on our own strength. We can't forgive, can't surrender, can't persevere without grace.

But with grace? With the very life of God poured into our souls? Then we can do all things through Christ who strengthens us.

"That Is Enough for Me"

The closing line. Dives sum satis—I am rich enough. I have enough. This is sufficient.

In a consumer economy built on manufactured dissatisfaction, where enough is never enough and there's always something more to want, Ignatius says: If I have God's love and grace, I need nothing else.

This is the simplicity of the saints. Not simplicity as aesthetic minimalism (though that can be helpful), but simplicity as unified desire. One thing is needful. And once you have that one thing, everything else is just details.

It's the inverse of the rich young ruler who went away sad because he had great possessions. Ignatius goes away joyful because he has given away all possessions and gained God.

"The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field." - Matthew 13:44

That's not sacrifice—it's joy. It's not loss—it's gain. It's not surrender—it's victory. Because what you're surrendering is worthless compared to what you receive.

Why This Prayer Is So Weird (And So Necessary)

The Suscipe is radically countercultural because:

• It rejects autonomy as the highest good
• It denies that you are self-made or self-sufficient
• It refuses to see your life as your own possession to do with as you please
• It surrenders control in a world obsessed with optimization and management
• It asks for nothing material in an age defined by accumulation
• It declares that love and grace are enough when we're told nothing is ever enough

This prayer is dangerous to every ideology that wants to make you into an autonomous consumer, a self-made success story, a personal brand. It's incompatible with the therapeutic gospel of self-actualization, the prosperity gospel of health and wealth, and the political gospels that promise salvation through the right policies or party.

It says: God is enough. Not God plus financial security. Not God plus a fulfilling career. Not God plus a happy family. Just God. And if God gives those other things as instruments of His will, great. But they're not the point. He is.

How to Pray the Suscipe

Honestly? Carefully.

This isn't a prayer to rattle off mindlessly. This is a nuclear weapon of a prayer. When you pray this—really pray it, mean it—you're giving God permission to rearrange your entire life.

Some suggestions:

• Pray it slowly. Sit with each line. Let it sink in. Feel the weight of what you're offering.
• Pray it honestly. If you're not ready to surrender something, tell God that. "I'm not ready to give up control of my career." That's a valid prayer. Ask for the grace to be willing.
• Pray it repeatedly. This is a prayer you grow into. You probably won't mean it fully the first time. Or the hundredth. Keep praying it. Let it shape you.
• Pray it in context. This is the culmination of the Spiritual Exercises—weeks of prayer, discernment, and encounter with Christ. It's not magic words. It's the fruit of relationship.
• Pray it expecting consequences. God will take you up on this. He will invite you to deeper surrender. He will ask you to let go of things you're clutching. Be ready.

The Suscipe and Keep Catholicism Weird

Everything about this prayer is weird by modern standards:

It's weird to surrender rather than assert.

It's weird to claim nothing rather than everything.

It's weird to ask for less rather than more.

It's weird to trust Someone Else more than yourself.

It's weird to believe that love and grace are sufficient.

And that's exactly why we need it.

Because the normal way—the way of control, accumulation, self-construction, and endless striving—is killing us. It's making us anxious, exhausted, lonely, and spiritually empty. It promises fulfillment and delivers only more desire.

The weird way—the way of surrender, trust, simplicity, and receptivity—is the only way that actually leads to peace.

So pray the Suscipe. Let it make you weird. Let it strip away the false self you've constructed and reveal the beloved child of God you've always been.

Let it ruin you for the world's way of doing things.

Because once you've tasted the freedom of having nothing to lose and everything to gain, once you've experienced the joy of surrender and the peace that surpasses understanding, you can't go back to the small, controlled, curated life the world offers.

You're ruined for anything less than God.

And that's the best thing that could ever happen to you.