You and I are miracles, walking miracles.

 the Contemplation to Attain Love. This is a tremendous exercise, and for centuries it has helped generations of people, on all continents, of all cultures. In this exercise, the retreatant is given four steps of prayer, of deepening one’s relationship with God and one’s direct experience of divine communion and personal freedom.

The first step in this exercise is to recall the gifts of your life: your birth, baptism, family, children, redemption, grace, qualities, and talents—anything and everything you have to be grateful for. In gratitude for these gifts that God has given you—and that includes the Divine himself—you offer it all, including yourself, back to God.

The second step is to ponder that the Divine is in every creature by its essence, power, and presence, and especially in you, the temple of the Holy Spirit, made in the likeness and image of the Divine. You are the temple of God’s spirit. Scripture says it clearly: God dwells in you. You are God’s image and divine likeness. Here are the words of St. Ignatius: See God present in you just as God is present in a temple. See yourself as God’s own image and divine likeness.

In the third step of the exercise, St. Ignatius has you think through all these gifts again and see God laboring in them. See God, like a woman in labor, working in each one of his gifts to you, and especially in you. What is a woman in labor doing? She is working to bring something to life, to bring something to fruition, to give birth in fullness, to convey life. What is God laboring to do? He is trying to perfect us, the temple where he dwells. He is trying to perfect his own image, his own likeness. He is trying to convey to us the fullness of life and make us good and beautiful. God is trying to help us see ourselves the way he sees us already.

The fourth step of the exercise will shatter you. To the Western mind, it will be almost impossible to accept or even believe. St. Ignatius says that the gift becomes divine. You and God become one, like the rays of the sun and the sun. You can distinguish the rays from the sun, but there are no rays without the sun. And there is no sun without rays. The two of them have one identity. And just in case you did not get that symbol, Ignatius goes on to say that it is like the waters of the fountain and the fountain. There is no fountain without water, and the water has its identity only in being part of the fountain.

Thus, at the end of the Spiritual Exercises, you and the Divine become one. Not only do you and God become one, but also everything is seen as a manifestation of the Divine. You look at a tree and see God and experience God. It is a manifestation of the Divine. It is the presence of the Divine that makes a tree a tree. It is a miracle.

From the energy of a tiny seed you get such a huge tree. If that is not a miracle, what is? You and I are miracles, walking miracles. Every human creature is a miracle. That is why the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins says that “the world is charged with the grandeur of God.” Everything is charged with God. Everything commands reverence.

This is the peak experience of the Spiritual Exercises—when you experience your identity in the Divine. That is the invitation of the Contemplation to Attain Love.