AMDG

FR. TERRY RYAN, CSP
Luke 7: 36-8:3
June 17, 2007

When I was growing up in the Bronx, I went to St. Francis of Rome Grammar School. As soon as we began to use paper tablets and notebooks with blank pages on them in which to print letters and words, we were instructed to first put at the top middle of the page, the letters AMDG. This was for Latin words that meant For the Greater Glory of God. I thought that it meant I wanted God to help me do well on the test or whatever I was putting down on the paper, so that God would be praised by my success, much like an athlete makes the sign of the cross before a competition.

With arithmetic all went well. I could memorize the multiplication and division tables, and answers were precise. 2+2+4. It does not equal 5 or 1. So I usually got 100% on these tests. AMDG, God helps me and God gets praised by my success. Easy. What a great religion. Then came algebra. It has letters and numbers. It is not so easy, but I could get the hang of it. I would get 90%. Still an A grade and God gets praised. Geometry was OK too. Then came advanced algebra, and trigonometry. I had a hard time with these. The grades dropped to 70%. I was putting AMDG on the paper, but God wasn’t helping me so God wasn’t getting praised. Finally came calculus. This was impossible. I was not praying for success. I just did not want to flunk out of school. The grades were 30% if I happened to stumble on an answer now and again.

How could God expect to get praised if my life was going so badly? I was not much interested in praising God. I was too busy feeling sorry or worrying about myself. What kind of religion is this where I ask for help, AMDG, and then suffer failure with no hope of success? It never occurred to me that God wants to be praised even when things don’t go my way, and when I am not doing so well. The AMDG meant that my attitude is to praise God in the effort, the attempt, and not worry so much about how things turn out. Praise God when life is a cross.

This is what the woman is doing in the gospel. She is praising God in her loss, her pain, her suffering, the whole mess of her life. Her mess, her failure is called “sin” by the religious leader who invited Jesus to dine. You might say she has had a lot of bad “calculus” days in her life. Instead of whining or complaining, which would be my response, she brings to Jesus what she has and praises him. She has tears, sorrow, long hair, and lots of guts to overcome public opinion. She is a woman of courage, not of perfection. She is giving God greater glory, the AMDG just as she is. She bears her cross to Jesus and receives forgiveness, acceptance, compassion and ultimately love.

She gave of all she had and did not worry if it might not be enough. She challenges me to praise God before every endeavor I undertake, not that it might go well, or according to my plan, but rather that God might be glorified by the effort and attitude that I bring to the task. Then when I am in the middle of the task, if things are not going according to my plan, and I begin to whine or complain, I suddenly recall that I promised to glorify God in the effort of this task. There is little room for murmuring when I recall my prayer AMDG, and God becomes more present to me even in the seeming mess of things. This is religion as transformation, which takes place on my “calculus” days and times.