Detachment and Freedom

The words that kept coming up this week were ‘detachment’ and ‘freedom.’ The former leads to the latter. Feel the freedom in this prayer:

“Take, Lord, and 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; dispose of it wholly according to Your will.

Give me Your love and Your grace, for this is sufficient for me.”

--Suscipe Prayer, St. Ignatius of Loyola

 In this prayer, we humbly detach ourselves from everything except God Himself: our material goods, interior blessings, and all the people we know and love. We recognize that all of it has been given to us by God; we don’t claim anything as our own. Instead, we open our hands and invite the Lord to take everything back.

We ask God to take from us anything that gets between us and Him, or gets in the way of how we love Him and each other. It encourages us to determine which habits, attitudes, and practices we need to detach ourselves from in order to make room in our hearts for His love and grace.

Offering everything back to God frees us from emotional baggage like greed, worry, and arrogance. For example, being detached from our material possessions allows us to freely share more of what we have with others. Ironically, yesterday morning I noticed that someone had stolen a flowerpot off our front porch. My heart sank: I was disappointed that I had one less flowerpot and also that someone felt the need to take it. And so I had to remind myself to stay detached: in this case, to acknowledge my disappointment, pray for the perpetrator, notice that I felt thankful that the other flowerpots and decorations were left untouched, and then give it all to God (see my blogpost, “Make Room for Flowers,” about giving up the ‘rocks’ in our hearts). Maybe I hadn’t freely offered those flowers, but later in the day I found myself thinking, “I hope they’re on someone else’s front porch, making them smile.”

I realize we’ve only scratched the surface of all the power behind this prayer. Still, let’s allow the words to sink into our souls. Let’s open our hearts and hands; let’s trust God to fill us with His love and grace and, by doing so, free ourselves to love as He loves.

“I sought the Lord, and He answered me; He set me free from all my fears.” –Psalm 34:5

 

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