Take, Lord, receive all my liberty, my memory, my understanding, and my entire will, all that I have and possess. You have given all to me. To you, Lord, I return it. All is yours; I surrender it wholly, according to Your will. Give me your love and your grace, for this is enough for me. (from the Spiritual Exercises)
At the beginning of our religion class, we say the Prayer of St. Ignatius of Loyola. St. Ignatius asks the Lord for nothing but His love and compassion. We ask God to take all of what we have because God is all we need. He gives love, understanding, and guidance.
God gives these things and we offer them back as an offering. God alone and His presence is all we need.
I don’t need any material possessions or anything else in order to have a relationship with God. To have a relationship with Him, all I need to do is ask for His unlimited love, grace, and compassion and He will give it to me. God is willing to provide me with whatever I may need as long as I just ask and follow Him.
Consider the Centurion in the Scriptures. The Centurion's humility was overwhelming. To expect Jesus to actually go out of his way to go to his house and heal his servant was way beyond him. So, all the Centurion asked was for Jesus to say the word. Think about it, all that this symbol of power asked was for Jesus to just say the word. If that was not humility, I don't know what that was.
It was humility. How many of us have such kind of humility these days?
Think about it, if that Centurion had that amount of love for his servant, how much more love do you think he had for his own family?
Think about it. May we all have twice the faith, love and humility of that Centurion.
Contributed by one of our Marianist high school students
