"Take o Lord and receive"  is a song composed by Dominik Dubiel SJ (PME) with lyrics known to every Jesuit, a fruit of the 8-day retreat. Below is the story behind the song as Dominik presented it in an interview with Piotr Jabłoński SJ

Piotr: What are the circumstances of the Polish version [...]?
Dominik: It is the story of my 8-day retreat in September of this year. You know how it usually is with our annual retreats. At 3pm you get off work and at 7pm you start 8 days in silence. The shock is usually so great that you learn to be silent for the first 3 days before going into the depths of your encounter with God. This time there was no such harsh braking in my case. My retreat fell at the end of my priestly month in Spain. Before being ordained a deacon, a Jesuit takes part in this kind of monthly program, which is an exploration of yourself, your motivations and desires, and why you want to be a priest in the Society of Jesus. After 3 weeks of lectures and workshops on the topic, my retreat began, so I was already very calmed down. I have to admit that I started with great comfort. My spiritual companion said to me: "Dominik, write a song. Spiritual consolation must be expressed in some way". So I turned on the computer during the retreat and started to compose. From the very beginning I was shy and respectful, because I tried many times in my Jesuit life to live the prayer "Take Lord and receive", and I know how it happens with this readiness - sometimes it's sweet, and sometimes bitter.

In any case, I quickly finished writing, and then came the distress. Great distress. For the first time in my life I had such an experience that I was completely unable to pray. This may sound a little strange, or cheeky, but I see in this experience some parallels to Ignatius' spiritual state at Manresa. This year we celebrate the 500th anniversary of Ignatius' conversion, and we often say that the cannonball was that key turning point in Inigo's conversion. And this is not entirely true. Yes, Ignatius went from being a knight in the royal court to a warrior for God. But he was still caught up in his own image and his own idea of life. It was only in Manresa that he experienced that one cannot earn God's love by one's own efforts. The only thing you can do is to receive it without any pretense of your own perfection. This is what I understood strongly during my retreat: that my prayer is so much walking with my own ideas and imaginations, but not with what God wants to show me. For so many years I thought that everything was fine (successful evangelizing events, accompanying others on retreats, etc.). I saw that in all this (including my personal prayer) there was always more of me than of God. And so the desolation began.

Piotr: Sounds threatening!
Dominik: That's how I felt, too. I wasn't able to pray. I know that sounds mega pretentious, but it just was. All the comfort from the beginning of the retreat melted away like the morning fog. The only thing that kept me going during the retreat was the conviction that God was inhabiting some part of my heart, even if I didn't feel Him myself. I clung to that and tried to hold on to that tiny hope, despite the total darkness.

Piotr: "And the light shines in darkness, and darkness could not overpower it"?
Dominik: By all means! To my great surprise, a new prayer was born in this place that I had not known before. There was silence, darkness and a tenuous desire to seek God and not self. There was no renewed burst of spiritual fireworks, but a quiet going out into the world accompanied by simply sitting and holding on to the hope of God's presence in spite of everything. At one point I realized that the only prayer I was capable of uttering was singing "Take Lord and receive" written a few days earlier. That is, a humble request that God accepts what is mine - such a small, weak, non-ideal thing as it is in reality, and not my illusory idea of being a super-Jesuit doing impossible things for Him. If God accepts it, I want Him to use it. I left the retreat with a prayer that grew out of me, though it wasn't really my idea. The song started praying on its own.