The gospel according to Fords and Chevys.

Last May, when I wrote about religious messages embossed on vanity license plates, I asked readers to send along any religious messages they spot on plates. I have been amazed at the number of responses and amused by many of them.

I don't know if personalized license plates first emerged on the West Coast, but California has moved the craft to new heights. There, in addition to letters and numbers, various symbols are also used. Rolling along the freeways, U.S. Catholic reader Margaret H. Lee spotted I RCIA and IN HIS. Another California plate, VAT T R, needs some translation. It belongs to Father William Travers, a retired Air Force chaplain, and stands for Vatican Technical Representative. Who would have guessed?

A knowledge of Latin helps decipher some plates. In New Orleans, reader John Wisinger saw a car in front of a Jesuit high school that sports AMDG, shorthand for the Ignatian motto Ad maiorem Dei gloriam ("To the greater glory of God"). Near Pana, Illinois you can find ORATE 1. The imperative on this plate is a command, not an invitation, to pray. And in Michigan, Sister Therese Mary noticed a car that wishes other drivers peace with PAX2U. Catholics, particularly older Catholics, may do better translating this church Latin than their Protestant sisters and brothers.

But more biblically trained Protestants may have the edge recalling from memory the chapters and verses of scripture that adorn some other license plates reported by Wisinger. The Mississippi plate MARK923 sounds like the fervent plea from a stranded motorist in the breakdown lane: "But if you can do anything, have pity on us and help us." A driver in Louisiana with PROV 3-6 appears to hope for divine assistance in avoiding traffic jams: "In every course you take, have him in mind: I will see that your paths are smooth." And next time the rude behavior of a fellow motorist makes your blood boil, remember the admonition from another Louisiana plate, PHIL 4-8: "Finally brothers, fill your mind with everything that is true, everything that is noble, everything.that is good and pure, everything that we love and honor, and everything that can be thought virtuous or worthy of praise."

Jill Owens in Nebraska wrote to tell us that her license plate used to read GO2MASS, but she said she gave it up when she tired of people who thought it suggested a trip to Massachusetts.

I recently saw a parked car with the Illinois plates ACTS 432: "The whole group of believers was united, heart and soul; no one claimed for his own use anything that he had, as everything they owned was held in common." I checked to see if the keys of that car might have been left in the ignition for me to use, but, alas, it was securely locked.

Thank you to all readers who responded to my request.