I used to think that Suscipe was what I did when the waiter at a Japanese restaurant brought me my check.
Now, I know better, which is why I need your help for a paper I'm writing for school.
Could you recommend any reading that would give me background on the mind St. Ignatius Loyola had in composing his Suscipe prayer? I'd be particularly interested in anything relating to the saint's understanding of divine love and his contemplation of how the believer might best offer up love to God in return.
For the paper, I'll be contemplating the prayer in light of what C.S. Lewis describes in The Four Loves as God's enabling man to return His "Gift-love":
Finally, by a high paradox, God enables men to have a Gift-love towards Himself. There is of course a sense in which no one can give to God anything which is not already His; and if it is already His, what have you given? But since it is only too obvious that we can withhold ourselves, our wills and hearts, from God, we can in that sense, also give them. What is His by right and would not exist for a moment if it ceased to be His (as the song is the singer's), He has nevertheless made ours in such a way that we can freely offer it back to Him. "Our wills are ours to make them Thine."Also, if you can recommend any reading by St. Thomas Aquinas on how God enables man to return His love, that would help as well. I know that the Summa has something to say on a related topic.
Many thanks! Blogging will be light until I finish this paper later in the week.
