📅 16 September 2026  |  👤 Br Glen Braganza SJ

St. Ignatius of Loyola

Few phrases in Christian spirituality have travelled as far, or been quoted as often, as Ignatius of Loyola's invitation to find God “in all things.” It sounds simple, even obvious. But behind that simplicity lies a genuinely radical idea about where the sacred actually lives.

Finding God in All Things: What the Phrase Actually Means

Ignatius did not arrive at this idea removed from ordinary life. It grew out of his own lived experience: the discovery that God was not confined to a church, sanctuary, chapel, or a set hour of prayer. For Ignatius, God was present in every element of life, large and small — in daily decisions, in relationships, in nature, and even in personal struggle. To find God in all things is not pantheism or panentheism; Ignatius did not mean that everything is God. He was saying something more precise: that God is present and active within ordinary and extraordinary experience alike, quietly at work in the middle of an unremarkable Tuesday.

This idea marks a significant shift in how spirituality is understood — away from a strict asceticism that called for leaving the world and cutting ties, an “escape from the world to find God,” and toward simply “paying attention to the world to find God.” It becomes less about reaching some other place and more about noticing the one we are already in. God isn't elsewhere, waiting to be reached. God is here, waiting to be noticed.

In early Church history, holiness was often assumed to require withdrawal — to the monastery, the strict rule, the cloistered life set apart from ordinary work and family. Ignatius's move broke from this assumption. He believed that anyone could find God: a schoolteacher exhausted after a long day, a dentist treating an impatient patient, a merchant closing a deal, a soldier on a march, a cyclist on a ride, a student anxious about admissions, a parent managing a household — all of them could be just as close to God as a monk in silent contemplation. It amounts to a democratization of spirituality: no special setting, no distinct way of life, no particular vocation requiring distance from the world. All that's needed is attentiveness — a way of paying attention that anyone, in any circumstance, can practice.

Finding God is not only about pleasant moments. Ignatius insisted that God could be found in difficulty, failure, rejection, and desolation as well — not in the same way as in moments of joy, but present nonetheless, often in what our hardest experiences reveal about us.

Where Can You Find God?

Finding God in all things isn't an abstract theory; it plays out in ordinary situations. It can be as practical as a difficult conversation with a coworker becoming an invitation to patience or humility. Unexpected free time might be a nudge to rest or reconnect with someone neglected. A persistent restlessness in an otherwise comfortable job could mark the beginning of real discernment. The joy a teacher feels in her students' embrace can be a much-needed hug. A genuine smile at the start of the day can make someone's whole day. Even the small delight of a good meal after a long day of work, or a moment of beauty in nature, art, or a child's laughter, can register as a moment of unearned grace — something given rather than earned or explained.

The core idea of finding God in all things is not a mystical add-on layered onto an otherwise ordinary life. It is a way of paying attention — treating everyday experience, not only the extraordinary or the seemingly sacred, as a genuine place where meaning and God are revealed. The practice isn't complicated. It simply asks us to slow down enough to notice what's already there.