“My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples.”
—Jn 15:8
“We express our renewed availability to be sent into the Lord’s vineyard, for the greater service of the Church and the greater glory of God.”
—35th General Congregation of the Society of Jesus, Decree 1
As a high school student in Brooklyn, I was intrigued by the motto of my Jesuit teachers. Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam showed up all the time, as did its shorthand version—A.M.D.G. The phrase appeared on chalkboards, in speeches and everywhere else. I knew that the translation from the Latin meant “For the Greater Glory of God,” but I still didn’t understand the phrase.
At one point I tried to figure out what it meant. The word greater seemed key to me. I decided that this must mean that Brooklyn Prep’s Jesuits sought the greater glory of God, while the religious orders who ran our rival high schools desired just some regular, ordinary version of God’s glory. In other words, the Jesuits thought themselves more zealous than their priest colleagues!
It didn’t take long for me to try out my theory at school, nor for the Jesuits to correct it. Smiling slightly, one of my teachers quickly dispelled my initial understanding of A.M.D.G. He explained that while Jesuits do have a reputation for fostering competition (certainly among students in class) and are concerned about excellence in God’s service, competition with other religious orders is not quite the point.
Flourishing
That was one misunderstanding of the phrase. But I ran into another one much more recently. As rector of the Jesuit community at Georgetown University a few years ago, I worked with a group of leaders charged with developing a new mission statement for the university’s medical center. The committee members told me that they hoped the statement would incorporate Jesuit ideals as much as possible. At one point they showed me the fruits of their labor. I was amused when I read their interpretation of our motto “For the Greater Glory of God.” They had decided that aiming for God’s greater glory meant promising to work harder.
My amusement turned into concern when I realized that staffers might take this description literally, causing overwork and stress at the Georgetown Medical Center.
I spoke to the lead administrator at the table. “Joe, it’s clear a lot of work has gone into this document and I like the way you and your staff tried to incorporate the Jesuit vision.”
“Thanks,” he responded. “That was a bit of a stretch for us, but we thought that it was important.”
“The one point I’d like to raise with you is how you interpret greater in the expression ‘For the Greater Glory of God.’ You mention in the draft statement that the members of the medical center commit themselves to working ‘harder and harder’ for the sake of the mission.”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“Joe, I’d invite you to consider another interpretation of that word. I like to think of the greater glory of God consisting in all of us flourishing more and more in union with God and in communion with each other and with the planet, with this communion being rooted in our growing union with God.”
He mulled this over. “I like that word: flourishing.”
“I do too. And flourishing can take varied forms,” I continued. “Sometimes the invitation to the greater glory of God is an invitation to work harder, sure; but at other times it can be an invitation to rest, to recreate, to ‘be’ for a while, rather than ‘do.’ We Jesuits believe that we all need to discern, to discover, what in each situation makes for God’s greater glory.”
A smile crossed Joe’s face. “I’m beginning to like this Jesuit thing!”
Our part of God’s glory
So what does this catchphrase really mean? For me, now everything rests on the words glory of God.
God’s glory is first of all about God—God’s unlimited being, infinite radiance, perfect knowledge, super-abundant love. But there is a second meaning of the phrase, and it includes us. God’s glory also refers to all reality being created by God: the galaxies, the stars, our planet with its oceans and land, animals and plants, winds and rain. And humanity, including you and me and everything we create. All these things are instances of God’s created glory.
The Jesuit motto A.M.D.G. refers to this second meaning of God’s glory. How do I know that? Because of that very same word that strained the medical center committee and that confused me back in high school. Greater. It is a comparative word, meaning that it references something which is expandable, or able to be increased, able to become “more” (magis).
God’s glory in the sense of God’s own reality can’t increase, of course. It is infinite, actually unlimited. You and I can’t add a thing to it. But the finite creatures that come from God’s hand can increase—they can grow and improve. In our evolving universe, elements and smaller compounds combine with other elements and compounds to become more complex realities.
You and I can name lots of ways in which we are developing. Admittedly, my own growth is not always an improvement, as the bathroom scale is only too happy to announce! But I hope that I grow in other ways that spell my increase as part of God’s “external” glory. And the most fundamental and most important way we as God’s glory grow is by becoming ever more united with God and growing in healthy communion with other creatures in God.
In other words, God’s greater glory is the increased thriving of any one of us and all of us together, in communion with God and with each other in God. This gets us much closer to how Jesuits understand A.M.D.G.
A Jesuit and anyone else who draws inspiration from Ignatius’ spirituality is called to be someone who, when confronted with two or more good and praiseworthy options, will choose that course of action most likely to bring about a greater degree of flourishing, of thriving, for the persons or situations involved, including oneself, in their communion with God and in their communion with each other in God.
This is a mouthful, I know. Let’s dissect this. First of all, the word greater refers to options or choices facing a person. (Just so we’re clear, it has nothing to do with Brooklyn Prep’s Jesuits out-praying the friars down the street!) Second, not all options, if acted upon, will contribute equally to the thriving of individuals or groups of people in union with God and with each other in God. Which option will contribute more (magis) to that flourishing?
And what does flourishing really mean? Is it about whether I change my eating patterns? Does it mean working more hours at the office or spending more time at home? Actually, both of these instances can be matters for discernment.
Discernment is the prayerful and thoughtful consideration of the various good options facing me in order to make a choice, using whatever evidence God gives me. Ignatius tells us about three kinds of evidence in his Spiritual Exercises. The entire purpose of this process is to discover which option is for the greater glory of God—Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam.
Authentic prospering
I once knew a Jesuit who was a workaholic. He never took a vacation, and he wouldn’t leave town for his annual eight-day retreat. He took on more and more responsibilities from other people. He was basically a very good person, but he was caught up in his own perfectionism.
Well, there came a time when all this crashed. He crashed. He was juggling too many tasks, and he couldn’t keep all the balls in the air any longer.
The man forced himself to take a real vacation (which was hard to do) and slowly unlearned some destructive habits. He began to notice Scripture passages that never meant anything to him previously, stories about Jesus going off by himself to rest and pray. Gradually, he found his sense of humor returning and his physical health improving. And he found that his desire to “waste time” with God in quiet prayer increased.
At first, it was painful for him to decline the many requests others brought to him. But he was realizing that the greater, authentic prospering for him—the greater glory of God in him—needed to take the form of unlearning those bad habits of excessive work and excessive responsibility. He came to appreciate the second part of the second great commandment: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
A terrific lay minister I got to know in Cambridge, Mass., had a wonderful gift of discernment. She relied on prayer and the Holy Spirit’s wisdom to determine the course of action most befitting the greater glory of God. This individual learned over the years to rely on the help of the Holy Spirit when she made choices, while using the evidence God gave her or doing her best reasoning about the options available and while seeking to grow in interior freedom (Ignatian “indifference”).
I could tell that, over time, she developed a sense for what would contribute more to the authentic growth of the people to whom she was ministering. Like Jesus, she sometimes offered compassion, encouragement and support. At other times—again like Jesus—she spoke a challenging word, one which could upset her hearer (but it seemed to be “good upset”). And this woman is fallible; she doesn’t always get it right. But she knows that God can work with even her imperfect decisions, so long as she keeps going back to the Lord for help as she makes choices and makes good sense of the data being given her in the discernment process.
Jesus and the cross
As I come to the close of these reflections, I would like to relate what I have written here to Jesus’ situation in his passion. That event (and countless others similar to this one) seems to call into question what I have been saying about God’s desire, God’s will for us.
God did not want Jesus to be arrested, insulted, tortured and crucified. God was totally opposed to all of that. What God wanted for Jesus in those horrific circumstances was that he remain totally united to, and dependent on, “Abba,” that he be obedient to the guidance of the Holy Spirit, and that he love his deserting disciples, the slandering religious authorities and the torturing Roman soldiers to the end. He wanted Jesus to remain in loving connection with the goodness in all of them that they were either numb to, or denying, or severely injuring by treating Jesus the way that they were.
That is what authentic flourishing, authentic prospering, looks like in horrible circumstances. Even in situations created by human beings intent on abandoning their leader and friend, or lying about him, or trying to strip him of his human dignity in the cruelest possible way, the possibility of authentic flourishing and authentic prospering, still exists.
I find it consoling to consider that God’s will for me and for all creation is that we always seek that which will make us authentically thrive yet more in our relationships, starting and ending with God. It helps to remember that God is more intent on our developing welfare than we are. For our greater flourishing is God’s greater glory.
These reflections hold some significant implications with regard to the process of seeking God’s will in any situation. First, I ought to engage in spiritual discernment only if I want to know God’s will for me here and now—and not to learn what course of action will be more successful in a this-worldly sense. Other methods of decision-making are adequate for that.
Second, it is necessary to remember that to approach God for help in my decision-making in order that I might increase and flourish in my self-centered ego or in my sense of my own competence and talents is to engage in a form of idolatry.
Finally, it is important to acknowledge that God’s will for me now might well be that I choose a course of action or non-action that will lead to a total or partial failure when viewed in this-worldly terms. Such a failure could be a sharing in the mystery of Christ’s death on a cross, which, when considered simply in and of itself and in this-worldly terms, was a failure.
