The Principle and Foundation

From the Principle and Foundation, St. Ignatius invites us to pause and ask ourselves why we were created and in what direction we are orienting our lives. This invitation is especially important because we can make mistakes in our choices and, without realizing it, end up placing our hearts in things that do not lead us toward the end for which we were created.

From my own experience, the Principle and Foundation has become not only something I study, but a way of living that helps me seek a fuller life, one that is freer and more meaningful. St. Ignatius proposes three fundamental attitudes: to praise, to reverence, and to serve God our Lord. And these three attitudes are not limited to our relationship with God; they are also expressed in our relationships with others and with all of creation.

The Principle and Foundation begins with an essential truth: we are relational beings. We need God, but we also need others. We were created to live in a relationship, to receive love, and to learn how to give it.

Praise and the Finitude of Our Lives

For me, to praise is to learn to live in gratitude. It seems simple: to recognize that our lives and everything we receive are free gifts from God. However, St. Ignatius reminds us that it is not enough simply to know or understand these truths, but to “feel and taste things interiorly” (SE 2).

This invitation to savor life inwardly as a gift from God has become deeper and deeper for me through the experience of loss.

Years ago, when I had just gotten married, I experienced the painful loss of two children in my womb. Years later, during the pandemic, we lost many freedoms, and one of the most significant was the freedom to be together. Then came the loss of loved ones because of the virus—people whom I would never see again in this life. And, two years ago, I also experienced the loss of my mother.

All these experiences of loss gradually transformed the way I look at life. It did not happen overnight, as perhaps I would have wished. It has been a process of learning about life and its finiteness.

Today, I can stop and recognize as a gift things I once took for granted: breathing, bringing food to my mouth, seeing, hearing, reading, driving a car, moving freely, being able to care for myself in the most basic needs as well as in the more complex ones. Everything that is part of being alive is a gift. And, at the same time, it is a finite gift.

One day I will have to surrender everything and return to the Father’s home. This awareness of my finiteness, rather than taking away my freedom, has helped me live with greater interior freedom and savor the present more deeply.

More and more, I am able to recognize clearly that life is a gift and, even more, a privilege. All that remains is to thank God for the gifts we receive each day and learn to live from that gratitude and praise to which the Principle and Foundation invites us.

For example, if I have a difficult day at work, remembering that one day I will no longer be able to do this can completely change my perspective. I can move from experiencing it as a burden to recognizing it as a gift: today I have the opportunity to do it, and I can ask God for the grace to do it as well as I possibly can.

The situation does not necessarily change. The work may still be difficult, the task may still be demanding, and the circumstances may remain the same. What changes is my interior disposition. The difficulty is no longer simply something I have to endure; it can become an opportunity to respond with love to the Creator who has given me this day and who also offers me the graces I need to live it.

Here I find a deeply Ignatian dimension: I cannot always choose what happens to me, but I can ask for the grace to choose how I will respond before God.

Reverence: Recognizing the Freedom and Dignity of Others

Reverence is an attitude of deep respect toward God, toward others, and toward all of creation. It is easy to respect someone who thinks, acts, and lives as we do. The real challenge comes when we encounter differences.

The Christian invitation goes even further. Jesus asks us to love even our enemies and to pray for those who persecute us (Mt 5:44). Reverence, then, does not depend on whether the other person is the way I would like them to be. It is grounded in recognizing that the other person is also a creature loved by God.

I was the first daughter in my family, and at a certain point I unconsciously assumed a role somewhat like that of a substitute parent. No one asked me to do this or imposed it on me, but I felt a great responsibility for everyone, especially for my siblings. From that place, I often wanted to control their lives in some way: giving advice, trying to help, and looking for solutions even when they had not asked me for them. I am still working on this.

As I recognized that my way of acting did not always fully respect the freedom of others, I began—and continue trying—to change the way I relate to them. I have learned to give them more freedom to make their own decisions and to offer advice or help when they ask me for it.

Over time, I have discovered something beautiful: as I have learned to relate to them with greater reverence and respect for their freedom, our relationships have gradually become more harmonious. And that outward harmony has also brought greater peace to my heart.

This has helped me understand that reverence is not simply “being respectful.” It also means allowing the other person to be who they are before God.

Both praise and reverence can be demanding. They are not attitudes we can achieve through our own willpower alone. We need to ask for God’s grace to grow in them.

Reverence in My Marriage

At this point in my life, after 15 years of marriage, I realize that mature love undoubtedly means loving the other person as they are and not as I would like them to be. This makes me think about the way God loves me: God knows me, loves me deeply, and at the same time leaves me free. He does not try to impose who I should be, but invites me, accompanies me, and respects my freedom.

The Principle and Foundation, in its reference to reverence, becomes very clear in the way I freely choose to love my husband. To revere him means recognizing that he is a person different from me, with his own way of being, thinking, feeling, and making decisions. It means allowing him to be who he is before God, without trying to shape him according to my expectations or desires.

This does not mean passively accepting everything or ceasing to express what I think or need. In our marriage, there is also a mutual responsibility to respond, listen, and respect one another. Reverence then becomes an interior attitude from which I can communicate with him without trying to control him.

I have also learned that serving from reverence is different from serving through imposition. I can offer him something, suggest a path, or do something for him, while trying to ensure that my intention is truly his good and not getting him to do what I want. The question changes from “How can I get him to do this?” to “How can I love and serve in a way that respects his freedom and seeks his good?”

For me, this is a very concrete way of living the Principle and Foundation in marriage: to love, respect, and serve from a place of freedom. Just as God loves me without taking away my freedom, I am called to learn to love my husband in a similar way: with love, respect, patience, and trust.

Perhaps reverence consists precisely in this: loving the other enough to let them be who they are, and trusting that God is also at work in their life.

Service: Loving in Concrete Ways

We are also called to serve. It seems like something simple, but I have discovered that serving from love is not the same as serving from obligation.

I often think of the parable of the Prodigal Son. The older son seems to experience his service through obligation and duty. The father, on the other hand, loves both of his sons, respects their freedom, does not try to control them, and remains with open arms, ready to welcome them.

Sometimes, as a mother, wife, or daughter, I recognize that I do many things out of obligation. Physical and mental exhaustion, routines, work, and the many responsibilities of life can cause me to lose sight of what is essential: serving with love the people God has placed closest to me.

The practice of service can become especially difficult after working a full day and arriving home with very little energy. But tiredness does not have to become an excuse for ceasing to love.

Jesus Himself often set aside His own weariness to care for those who needed Him. I remember a phrase a Jesuit friend once told me that I have never forgotten: “Mercy comes first.”

I also remember the sleepless nights I experienced, like so many mothers, when my daughter was a baby. I especially think of the nights when I had to get up every two hours to breastfeed her. Many times, I do not know where I found the strength. I think that, in those moments, it was love that sustained me.

And now I can recognize something more: when we serve from love, two things happen.

First, service helps us move beyond ourselves. It frees us from selfishness because our attention is no longer centered only on our own needs but turns toward the other.

Second, I have experienced that when God entrusts me with a task, He also gives me the graces necessary to carry it out.

I have experienced receiving an energy that did not seem to come solely from my own strength: when I cared for my daughter as a baby, when I cared for my mother for several months, or even when I am so focused on preparing and teaching reading lessons to my students that time seems to disappear.

There are moments in service when tiredness, time, and space seem to lose their importance. I dare to think that, in those moments, it is not only I who am acting, but God working through me.

As St. Paul says:

“It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.”
(Galatians 2:20)

Service can thus become a privileged place of encounter with God.

Conclusion: A Lifelong Journey of Learning

In conclusion, living from praise, reverence, and service does not mean that at some point in our lives we will have mastered them perfectly. Rather, they are like an art that we learn and gradually perfect through practice, through our falls, through our experiences, and, above all, through the grace of God.

For example, I am not a very good cook. Yet I have discovered that practice awakens my creativity and that, little by little, I am improving. In the same way, the spiritual life requires practice. We can grow in our ability to praise, reverence, and serve throughout our entire lives.

And perhaps true spiritual progress does not consist in becoming perfect people, but in allowing God to transform our hearts so that we can live with ever greater freedom and love.

I also believe that we need to ask ourselves how we are living these three movements in our own lives:

To what extent do I give thanks for the gift of being who I am?

How do I respect myself and treat myself with dignity?

How do I attend to and serve my own needs?

This last question seems especially important to me. We can hardly offer others something that we ourselves have not learned to receive and cultivate within. Loving others also requires learning to receive God’s love for ourselves.

The Principle and Foundation thus becomes not merely a text we study, but a concrete way of living and discerning.

St. Ignatius invites us to order our lives toward that for which we were created: to praise, reverence, and serve God our Lord, and to do so from an interior freedom that allows us to receive everything as a gift and choose what leads us most toward Him.

In the end, perhaps it is about learning to live in such a way that we can recognize God in all things, receive everything with gratitude, respect the freedom and dignity of others, and respond to the love we have received through service.

And, little by little, discover that everything is grace, a gift, a privilege.

By Neitheva Calta

Full Text of the Principle and Foundation

Man is created to praise, reverence, and serve God our Lord, and by this means to save his soul; and the other things on the face of the earth are created for man and to help him in attaining the end for which he is created.

Hence, it follows that man is to make use of them in so far as they help him in attaining his end, and ought to rid himself of them in so far as they hinder him as regards that end.

For this it is necessary to make ourselves indifferent to all created things, in so far as we are allowed by the liberty of our free will and are not prohibited; so that, on our part, we want not health rather than sickness, riches rather than poverty, honor rather than dishonor, a long life rather than a short one, and so in all the rest; desiring and choosing only what is most conducive for us to the end for which we are created.

St. Ignatius of Loyola, Spiritual Exercises [23]