Homily by Father Michael Holman SJ, British Provincial, at the Saint Ignatius Day Mass at Farm Street Church

Luke 9:18-26 'Who do you say that I am?'

It is surely the case that if anything binds together the former students of Jesuit colleges, from Seattle to Sydney, from Buenos Aires to Berlin, and even from Liverpool to London, it is a common and equal familiarity with that unmistakeable series of four letters, the motto of St Ignatius and of the Society he founded, 'AMDG', Ad Maiorem Dei Gloriam, 'for the greater glory of God'.

Time was when the practice of every Jesuit school in this country differed only in this respect: were those letters to appear in the top left hand corner of each new piece of work only, or in the top left hand corner of each and every page of each and every piece of work?

'Give me a boy at the age of seven and I'll have him for life'.  It may be doubted that St Ignatius ever said those words, but what cannot be doubted is that the attachment to our motto persists amongst our former pupils long after school, and not least at university where examiners, it is said, have wondered at the significance of these letters emblazoned at the top of final examination papers.

What's more, it is rumoured they have even led to romance.  An eighteen year-old boy and girl, I am told, sat side by side, on their first day of classes, in their very first lecture at university.  Sensing something special between them, they were unable to break the ice, until, that is, each saw the other instinctively write at the top of a pristine note-pad that instantly recognizeable combination of letters 'AMDG' and thereafter words flowed!

Just before leaving my last post as headmaster of our school in Wimbledon, I asked another eighteen year-old what he was going to do with himself once he had left school.  He explained that university was not for him (a judgement with which I wholeheartedly agreed!) and he had been offered employment. 'Where?' I asked 'At the tattoo parlour just off Tooting Broadway.  And if you'd care to call in, Father, I'll give you a nice AMDG in green, blue and red on the forearm, or, if you'd prefer, across the knuckles, compliments of the management'.

Ad majorem Dei gloriam. 'For the Greater Glory of God'.  But what is this 'greater glory of God'?

As a good many of you will know, we have a meeting coming up in Rome this January, a 'General Congregation', only the 35th in our 470 year history, at which 200 provincials and delegates will elect a successor as Superior General to Fr Peter-Hans Kolvenbach.

While we are all pleased for Fr Kolvenbach, that after 25 years at the helm of the world-wide Society, and at the age of 80, he may finally look forward to some years of well-earned and peaceful retirement, we regret the passing of a wise leader, not least one able to reveal, in the most appealing way, the foundations of our way of life.

The 'greater glory of God' has nothing to do, as we speculated as children, with offering up words of worship to some praise-hungry deity.  Fr Kolvenbach's explanation of these words took me on a journey to the very heart of Ignatius and of all who follow him.

Jesus Christ alone is the 'glory of God'; men and women living his life today is the 'greater glory of God'.

It's a matter of being so attracted to Jesus, so much in love with him who is for us the way and the truth and the life, that he is our everything.

It's a matter of wanting to be so identified with this one who has chosen us for his friends and companions, that we want to be like him, not only on the outside, in what we do, but on the inside, in who we are.

It's a matter of wanting to share his life, to share his heart, to share whatever it was that made him him, such that it can make us us, so that through us, marvellous to say, he might become present to our world today, amongst men and women who so much need him today.

For Fr Kolvenbach it's most of all about being so much in love with him that we long to be still closer to him, 'fools for Christ's sake', right up alongside him, carrying his cross with him.

The 'greater glory of God' is men and women responding to the question 'who do you say I am?' with the words 'You are the Christ' written in their lives that others might have life.

Now such love, as you may well surmise, doesn't come about so much through argument or from reading books; it comes about through a personal and unforgettable encounter with that living Lord Jesus.

As I look around at the work we and those who work with us do in Britain, in South Africa, in Guyana and the Caribbean, what makes me proud are the numerous new opportunities that are being provided for men and women, most of all for young men and women, to encounter the living Lord Jesus, for the greater glory of God.

There are opportunities to meet him in prayer, with adaptations of the Spiritual Exercises offered in schools, colleges, universities and parishes, on the internet and on ipods.

There are opportunities to encounter him in the faces of the poor and marginalised, by volunteering right here in London, by spending time working alongside the dalits in India or with the poorest in the slums of Kibera on the outskirts of Nairobi.

There are opportunities to explore, inside and outside of class, full time or part time, with experts, in London or in Edinburgh, Johannesburg or Barbados, what it means to be a follower of his, in this multi-faith and multi-cultural society in which discipleship, what it means to say 'you are the Christ', can seem so much more complicated.

Happily in the last so many years, the way of Ignatius, which when I was young seemed the preserve of the exclusive few, has come to inspire the lives of countless men and women engaged in a variety of ministries inside the Church and especially on the frontiers of the Church.  It's the way of Ignatius that enables us to identify and respond to the call of Jesus in this crazy, complicated yet loveable world; it's the way of Ignatius that enables us to understand our ordinary ministry as sharing in his extraordinary mission.  It's the way of Ignatius that transforms us by enabling us to live our lives in friendship and companionship with him.

Once the way of some, the way of Ignatius has happily become the way of the many.  Still more necessary therefore is it that there be some who by the dedication of their whole lives, give direction and inspiration to the many.

That's why tonight we give thanks for Paul: for his medical expertise which he puts at the service of the poorest in this city; for the call he has to witness to the Gospel in the complex world of healthcare; but above all for that desire which God has given him to hand over, tonight, his whole life, no matter where, no matter what, but always with Jesus, to the leading of that same Lord, at the service of his Church.

So let's pray for him that this Jesus, who has called Paul to be his companion, may give him whatever it takes to be for us a living picture of what it means to live with Jesus as our everything, to say 'you are the Christ' with our lives, and so to live 'AMDG', Ad Maiorem Dei Gloriam, truly 'for the greater glory of God'.