As Sisters of Saint Joseph and Associates, we celebrate our Ignatian heritage and join with the Jesuit family, including our founder Jean Pierre Medaille, in giving thanks to God for the example, zeal and spiritual genius of Ignatius. So much has been written about Ignatius, and so much has been taught to us about this spirituality and the Spiritual Exercises! What more could we say about this great friend of ours in the Company of God's Holy Ones?

I offer a simple reflection that comes out of my study of the chivalric literature of Spain's Middle Ages. Ignatius is clear that this genre of literature and the way of life - the chivalric code - that it documents were important influences and inspirations in his life choices and writing. In that light, I read the "Suscipe," the "Take, Lord and receive" prayer of Ignatius as a formulaic covenant between the lord and the vassal. The verb form Ignatius employs signals this relationship, and the terms on which he bases the prayer reinforces it. The true lord-vassal relationship was a mutual exchange of goods and loyalty. While the vassal owed everything to the lord, the lord was honor-bound not to receive any gift of offering from someone who was not his vassal, or from a vassal, that he, the lord, was not acknowledging, supporting, and protecting. In this sense, when we pray the Suscipe with Ignatius, we are acknowledging our total dependence on God and our utter reliance on God's fidelity. We are calling God to mutuality, to protection and sustenance and promising God our very lives in return.

In a wonderful lecture about the "Poem of My Cid," the classic Spanish poem depicting this kind of relationship, Professor Lynn Harry Nelson makes two interesting observations. The first is that the "happiest of vassals is honored and enriched by his lord. He is so certain that  [his lord] will do the right thing that all he needs to think about is how to serve [his lord] as well as he is able. Both [lord] and [vassal] bring glory and riches to the other and live in perfect harmony, trust and comradeship." Isn't this a portrait of the relationship Ignatius enjoyed with God and the relationship that God offers us and hopes we will accept?

Professor Nelson's second observation really struck me. "One must remember that romantic love in Western literature did not appear until the early eleventh century [after the chivalric genre fades] and that the chansons de geste consider the most important human relationship to be between vassal and lord." How telling that for Ignatius and for anyone called to religious life, the relationship with our Lord is our "romantic" relationship! The One to whom we give our lives and who offers us everything in return is the love of our lives.

--Ceil Cavanaugh, SSJ

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