Daily Inspiration Quote by Saint Ignatius

A line like this doesn’t ask for generosity; it demands a rewiring of the moral bookkeeping we’re trained to do. “Teach us” casts selflessness not as an inborn virtue but as a discipline, the kind you practice until it becomes instinct. That’s classic Ignatian logic: the self is both the problem and the material to be shaped. He doesn’t flatter the reader’s goodness. He assumes our default setting is calculation.

“Give” lands as an active verb, but the real blade is “not to count the cost.” The phrase targets the quiet, modern habit of turning ethics into a spreadsheet: What do I lose? What do I get back? Will this drain me? Will anyone notice? Ignatius isn’t naïve about sacrifice; he’s preempting the negotiation that dilutes it. The cost is not denied; it’s declared irrelevant to the act.

Context matters. Ignatius is writing from the early Jesuit world of vows, missions, and high-risk service at the edge of empire and plague. For a founder trying to form an order, “don’t count the cost” is spiritual counsel and institutional strategy: stop auditing your discomfort, stop bargaining with God, stop treating devotion like a contract with deliverables.

The subtext is bracingly psychological. Keeping score is a way to stay in control, to preserve a protected self. Ignatius presses for a different freedom: giving that isn’t hostage to resentment later. The line works because it admits how hard that is, then frames it as something you can be taught - not by sentiment, but by practice.