“For Me”

One of the things we try to get in touch with during the Third Week of the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius is that Jesus died for me. That he didn’t just die for all of us, but for each of us. It is an incredible thing to experience – the realization that if it were only me and no one else, Jesus would have done exactly as he did.

I just came across thisl passage written by Chiara Lubich, founder and president of the Focolare movement, who died earlier this year, which immediately brought the grace of the Third Week of the exercises to mind. She writes,

“Jesus died for us. That means Jesus died for me; God died for me.

“This is humanity’s grandeur: that God died for us. While we may indeed speak of humanism and give it a fully Chrisitan meaning, no one has ever reached such a lofty conclusion. No one has ever had such esteem for humanity as to imagine that God could have loved us to the point of dying for us….Jesus, God, died for me.

“How can we not be happy, not enjoy all of life in him, not offer him our suffering?

“If Jesus died for me, he is always thinking of me, always loving me. And I? I should always be thinking of him, always loving him.”

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