The Suscipe (from the Latin “take and receive”) is St. Ignatius of Loyola’s prayer of complete surrender to God. Written at the end of his Spiritual Exercises in 1548, it distills a month-long retreat into seven sentences. Pray it when you need to let go of outcomes, plans, or the illusion of control.
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 thines; 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 asks God to take everything: not just possessions, but the invisible scaffolding of identity (memory, understanding, will). Ignatius wrote it after spending years in discernment, learning to distinguish God’s voice from his own ambitions. The prayer assumes you have already given God your exterior life; now you are handing over the interior architecture.
The final line is the hinge. Ignatius does not ask for success, clarity, or even peace. He asks for love and grace, then calls that sufficient. This is the grammar of detachment: God’s presence is enough, even if nothing else comes.
Pray it slowly when a decision looms and you cannot see the right path. Pray it before opening your laptop to work you did not choose. Pray it when someone else’s plan displaces yours and you feel the tug of resentment. The Suscipe does not make surrender easy; it makes surrender possible.
Carry it through this week.
