Some of us remember beginning every new page of school work with the heading A.M.D.G. A good number of us also recall that the letters stood for Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam, for the Greater Glory of God.

I imagine that many older Catholics stopped the practice of marking every page with this prayer when they left school. Younger Catholic have likely never been told about the prayer. I’m not sure why the practice has faded out of Catholic school. I was at a Catholic school when the encouragement to continue the practice waned. I remember one teacher commenting that if a non-catholic exam marker saw this s/he could be annoyed and mark me harder. I needed every mark I could get and so was not prepared to take the risk.

It was Ignatius of Loyola (feast day today) who coined the prayer ‘for the greater glory of God’. This became the ‘motto’ for the Religious Order he founded, the Society of Jesus.

Take a minute to be inspired by these young people speaking about AMDG