St. Ignatius of Loyola wrote this prayer in 1548 as the capstone of his Spiritual Exercises, a 30-day retreat designed to bring a person into radical freedom before God. You pray it when you need to stop negotiating with God and simply give everything back.
Take, Lord, and receive all my liberty, my memory, my understanding, and my entire will, all that I have and possess. Thou hast given all to me. To thee, O Lord, I return it. All is thine; dispose of it wholly according to thy will. Give me thy love and thy grace, for this is sufficient for me.
St. Ignatius of Loyola, 1548
How this prayer works
The Suscipe (Latin for “receive”) names everything you cling to: your freedom to choose, your memory of the past, your ability to reason, your will. It names them not to demonize them but to acknowledge they are gifts. Then it hands them back. The prayer is asking for the grace to stop treating your life as your own project and to let God direct it wholly.
Ignatius wrote it at the end of the Exercises because surrender is not where you start; it is where discernment leads. You cannot give away what you do not know you have been holding. The prayer assumes you have already spent weeks examining your attachments, your fears, your disordered loves. Only then can you pray this cleanly.
Pray it slowly this morning, naming each gift as you release it. Say it before a decision you have been overthinking. Say it when you realize you are trying to control an outcome that is not yours to control. Carry it through the day as a prayer of the day that returns you to the one thing sufficient: God’s love and God’s grace.
