The Suscipe is St. Ignatius of Loyola’s prayer of radical surrender, written near the end of his Spiritual Exercises in 1548. When you’re gripping too tightly to a plan, a relationship, an outcome, or even your own understanding of how God should work, this prayer offers a different path: total trust.
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
Ignatius asks God to take everything: memory (the past you cling to), understanding (the explanations you demand), will (the control you won’t release). This isn’t passive resignation. It’s active offering. The Suscipe assumes God gave you these faculties in the first place, that they belong to Him, and that returning them is the only honest response to His prior gift.
Ignatius wrote this prayer as the climax of his monthlong Spiritual Exercises, a retreat process designed to free the soul for discernment. The Suscipe is what you pray when you’ve wrestled with God’s will and you’re ready to stop wrestling. It ends not with a request for outcomes but for love and grace, which Ignatius calls sufficient.
Pray it when a decision has you paralyzed, when loss has emptied your hands, when you catch yourself bargaining with God. Say it slowly, one phrase at a time, before you open your email or sit down to a hard conversation. The Suscipe doesn’t solve the problem. It reorients you toward the only One who can.
Carry it with you today.