Finding God in All Things!

Thursday, July 31, 2025

Feast of St. Ignatius of Loyola

1 Cor 10:31-11:1; Lk 14:25-33

The feast of St. Ignatius of Loyola invites us to find God in all things. 

While the invitation appears like a cakewalk, the struggle to find God in all things and transform the world into a godly place is something real and pricking. 

At times, the invitation of St. Ignatius to find God in all things appears so spiritual that we may hastily conclude that it has little scope for action. Sometimes we may wonder if finding God in all things is possible at all. Also, we are clueless about what entails finding God in all things. 

While it is not possible to avoid such confusions, we find that St. Ignatius, the soldier-turned-pilgrim, envisioned the beautiful possibility of finding God in all things and wished that we too partake of the sublime experience. The novel way in which St. Ignatius wants us to find God in all things inspires our reflection for today. 

We can approach the invitation of St. Ignatius in two ways. 

Not Abstracting the Sacred: While St. Ignatius sought God fervently, he was careful not to bury himself in an abstract spiritual journey. Instead, the active form of spirituality that he conceived extended sacredness to the mission fields of all types. As such, his spirituality did not suggest an escape from the world, but going deeper into it. Hence, the Jesuit saint disliked confining the God experience to places like churches or monasteries or imagining only a stereotyped mission field. Instead, he wanted his companions to find God in the real-world setting without locking themselves up within four walls. 

Not Abandoning the Secular: While St. Ignatius found sacredness ubiquitous and believed that God could be found in all things, he envisioned that his companions would come up with initiatives that could transform the secular order. This is the reason St. Ignatius wanted to see his companions not merely ‘contemplatives’ but ‘contemplatives in action.’ If we take a closer look at the phrase, we find St. Ignatius overcoming the temptation to bisect contemplation and action. For the Jesuit founder, contemplation need not be an isolated spiritual exercise but a spiritual stooping to conquer the world in action for the love of Christ. Yes, for St. Ignatius, God is to be found in the quiet, but also in the cry of the world.

The ones who find God in all things and turn themselves into contemplatives in action to help others experience the all-pervasive sacredness will share the profundity of the Suscipe of St. Ignatius: ‘Take Lord, and receive all my liberty, my memory, my understanding, and my entire will, all that I have and possess. Thou hast given all to me. To Thee, O Lord, I return it. All is Thine, dispose of it wholly according to Thy will. Give me Thy love and Thy grace, for this is sufficient for me.’

Let us pray for the gift of finding God in all things so that we may see the world as the very place of encountering God.

Fr. Dhinakaran Savariyar