~ by Fr. Jack Bentz, SJ

St. Ignatius famously prayed that God might “teach us to give and not to count the cost.” I am pretty sure that God finds that we are not very teachable in this particular area– we as Jesuits, and we as North Americans. Our context and education tells us to not only count the cost but insist on the exact compensation for that accounting. If I am going to give something to God I expect something of the same size in return from God. Often, for us, the virtue is in the fact that we are giving at all not that we gave and then gave up expecting repayment.

But to give and not count the cost is our ticket to transforming our life with Christ from a limited business contract of compensation for services rendered to a wide open love relationship. Our other options in this dynamic are not life giving as most of us know this from actual personal experience.

If we are responding to the call of Christ out of only a sense of duty then we will eventually become filled with resentment. And our hearts will harden and our ability to love the world will shrink to exactly the same size as our affection for God. When we expect compensation we will always be disappointed by the comparison between how much one gives and how much one gets. In our minds, God changes from being our loving creator to our stingy overseer.

This approach will not do.

By learning to “give and not to count the cost” we are asked to change the dynamic, to reach further down and find what humans are all about- or who humans are all about. We must move from achievement of a goal to the engagement of a person. This realization has the potential to transform our work in the world as Christians.

When we are rooted in a relationship with Christ we are eager to give and give and give because in doing so we are closer to God and closer to those who God loves. If we are feeding the poor we do so because that is where we find Christ. We give our time and energy to that work because it is our way to God not something we do for God. If we are teaching high school students we do so because that is where we find Christ. And we show up each day and try to explain Spanish verbs to sophomores because this is our way to God not because we are doing something for God in hopes that he will do something for us.

By moving Christ to the center of our labor and not keeping him standing at the end we are able to transform our work through our relationship to Christ. Christ is not the person who approves of what long days we work, but rather is the one who we find through our long days. We can be moved from a system of achievement, delayed gratification, and self improvement to engagement of our mission as a way to encounter Christ in our work and not as payment for our work.