How much

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In an ecstatic turn of phrase in a closing meditation of his Spiritual Exercises, Saint Ignatius Loyola, asks the retreatant to ponder, "how much the Lord desires to give himself to me." Certainly this arises out of Ignatius' own experience of Christ's love for him. In Ignatius' expression we hear an echo of Saint Augustine's words centuries earlier, "God thirsts to be thirsted after." 

Detail of Saint Ignatius of Loyola, Peter Paul Rubens, c. 1620-22, Norton Simon Art Foundation.

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