Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. Luke 6:38
“A person should not be miserly when God our Lord has been so generous with him. We shall have peace and kindness in proportion to how much of them we have given in this life.” Letter 2 (1532)
“By obedience one puts aside all one is, one dispossesses oneself of all that one has, in order to be possessed and governed by divine providence.” Letter 31 (1553)
Ignatius of Loyola (1491-1556), Spanish founder of the Society of Jesus and author of Spiritual Exercises, in St. Ignatius of Loyola: Personal Writings (New York: Penguin, 1996) 120, 255.
In reading some of the letters by Ignatius, I discovered these two statements, so hopefully you find today’s post doubly good. To give you a frame of reference, Ignatius was born an aristocrat and became a bold soldier. He had a reputation for emerging from battles unscathed until a cannonball badly damaged one of his legs in 1521. While recovering, he read “De Vita Christi” (The life of Christ), which changed his life.
In 1522 he joined a Benedictine monastery. In 1523 he traveled to the Holy Land and back. These were troubled times due to the Spanish Inquisition, so by 1531, he traveled to Paris, France, for further theological education. This first quote comes from a letter during his season of study. He appears to be mapping out his rule of life while exploring the teachings of Jesus. The first quote echoes today’s biblical text.
Some time later, in 1540, his order, the Society of Jesus, was approved by the Pope. By the time of his death in 1556 he had established 35 schools with over 1,000 members. As you notice above, the second excerpt comes from his personal advice to society members late in his life. The tone sounds like that of a mentor sharing with young Christ followers what he could only have learned by experience.
These two statements provide priceless counsel for us today! Let us not be “miserly” but choose a generous measure for dispensing “peace and kindness” to others. We must choose the proportion such as we’d like to receive. And let us set aside ourselves, our will, our possessions, which actually entangle us, and “be possessed and governed by divine providence” so that God’s love flows richly through us.