What's in a Name?

Feast of the Holy Name of Jesus
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  Shakespeare famous wrote in his play, “Romeo and Juliet,” “What’s in a name?  That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”  Today as we celebrate the Holy Name of Jesus, we may fall into the same nominalism error that Shakespeare seemed to espouse, that names don’t really make any difference.  But names contain power and access.
    When God first reveals His Name to Moses in the theophany at the burning bush, God reveals Himself as “I AM WHO AM,” or, more simply, “I AM.”  This doesn’t sound like a name to us.  But that’s on purpose.  When we know someone’s name, we have a certain power over that person.  When I stand in a crowded room with my parents with a fair amount of noise, I might say “dad” numerous times without him hearing me.  But, if I were to say “Robert,” it would likely gain his attention.  Or, when a pope dies, to make sure he is dead, they tap him with a decorative small mallet and whisper his baptismal name, figuring that he would respond to the name his parents called him.  When we know a name, we have power, as that person’s attention is turned to us.  But even God did not grant His Chosen People to have power over His Name.  He promised to be with them and to turn to them whenever they called upon Him, but they could not say His name.  In fact, they would simply use the Hebrew word Adonai, which means “Lord,” instead of using the Hebrew word for I AM, which is abbreviated by the consonants YHWH. 

Pope Benedict XVI, of happy memory, asked Catholics not to use this sacred name in the Mass, out of respect for our Jewish brothers and sisters.  Only one time, on the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur, would the high priest, standing before the ark of the covenant, utter the sacred Name of God.
    When our Lord, at least once, in the Gospel of John, referred to Himself as “I AM,” He taught us of His unity with the Father in divinity.  And the people recognized this.  They rise up to stone our Lord for blasphemy.  While some of the I AM statements in John work grammatically and could be interpreted simply as indicative statements using metaphors, the one that stands out is when Christ says, “Before Abraham came to be, I AM.”  That sentence makes no sense, unless Christ is identifying His oneness with the Father.  
    But, just as the prohibition against making images of God changes with the Incarnation, so does the relationship between God’s People and His Holy Name.  Part of the humility of the Incarnation was that God had a name that the people could freely use.  The name of Jesus means “God saves.”  It does, in a sense, define Him, as our Lord is the salvation of God.  No longer is the name not to be uttered at all, but it can be called upon freely in times of need.  Peter and John will heal a lame man “in the name of Jesus Christ the Nazorean.”  The people come to believe at this great act and Peter’s preaching, such that Peter and John are arrested and stand on trial before the Sanhedrin for what they have done.  That’s where our epistle comes in.  St. Peter proclaims that there is no other name by when men can be saved other than Jesus, a teaching the Church has continued throughout the centuries.  It is the name at which, as we heard in the Introit from St. Paul’s epistle to the Philippians, every knee should bend, whether those in heaven, on earth, or under the earth, because Jesus Christ is Lord.  Again, Lord was the term that a Jew would have used for God, so St. Paul is affirming the divinity of Christ through His Name.
    The custom of preaching during the Mass is not to use the name of Jesus too often.  I refer to Him as the Lord, or the Savior, or the Redeemer, or simply Christ.  But we should not be afraid to call upon the name of our Savior in time of need, because He has given us His name so that we can receive help.  In the Orthodox Church, there is a practice of simply saying the name, “Jesus” as one breathes in and out.  This beautiful prayer can calm us when we are anxious, and rely on the strength of the Holy Name to cast aside anything that seeks to harm us.  When exorcists cast out demons, they do so with the power of the Holy Name, at which the demons have no choice but to obey, because the power comes, not from the priest, but from Christ Himself.  
    So names are important.  The Holy Name of Jesus is the most important name, because it identifies who God is and what He does.  Whereas in the Old Testament, the name of God was used only rarely, our Lord invites us to call upon His Holy Name whenever we are in need, whenever we are giving thanks, whenever we pray as a church.  May the Holy Name of Jesus protect us from all assaults of the enemy, and may we receive salvation through the Holy Name of Jesus, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit is God, for ever and ever.  Amen. 

The Blessing of Children

Feast of the Holy Family

    During Christmas we so often focus on children.  One of the greatest blessings in a family is a child.  A child signifies the fruit of the love between a husband and wife.  A child means that the human race has one more person to continue it.  The child shares certain traits with its parents.  A child means an increase in love, not only from the mother and father, but also, in a mysterious way, from the child itself, who can do very little on its own.  For this reason we celebrate with baby showers or diaper parties; we prepare food for the new parents; we offer to help in any way we can, especially during those first few very difficult months.
    And while all of this rings true for the earthly birth of a child, it is also true for the spiritual rebirth of a person, of whatever age.  A baptized person is the fruit of the love of God.  A baptized person means there is one more disciple, one more follower of Christ.  A baptized person is called to develop the traits of God the Father.  A baptized person means an increase of love from the Most Holy Trinity, but also becomes a vessel of love to return to the Trinity the love he or she first received, but also to share that same love of God with others.
    Right now our society and even our members of the Church at times struggle with welcoming earthly children and with passing on the faith to the next generation.  While it is no longer a constitutionally protected activity in the US Constitution, the citizens of Michigan voted to make abortion a protected activity within our State Constitution.  Our governor has touted how much easier it is now to get an abortion, and has tried to convince others to move here so that they can have abortions whenever they want to.  Apparently the math is lost on her that, when we encourage the killing of the next generation, it doesn’t help the population grow; you can’t add people by subtracting people. 
    While I will also never fully appreciate the challenges in raising a child, and a couple’s discernment through prayer and reflection of how many children to conceive using Natural Family Planning, as well as with compassion for those who want children but who cannot receive them, those who prayerfully choose to have more than two children are often, whether jokingly or not, ridiculed or their intelligence questioned.  “Don’t you know what causes that?” they are sometimes asked.  I once heard a person say, in response, “Yeah, and I like doing it!”
    Spiritually, too, some families struggle to pass on the faith.  In some extreme cases, they advocate delaying baptism until the child can choose for him or herself.  If we were to extend this analogically to the other important aspects of life, the foolishness of this position becomes quite apparent: I’m not going to feed my child until she can decide what she wants to eat; I’m going to let my child choose what clothes to wear, or whether to wear any at all; I’m not going to love my child until he asks for it.  Loving parents force all sorts of things of their kids that they need: food, clothing; and love, to name a few. 
    Kids are smart, too.  They can tell what parents prioritize.  So when sports always or often comes before Mass; when families don’t pray together in the home; when the name of Jesus is more often used as a curse word than to invoke God’s blessings; kids figure out if faith is something that happens when convenient, or if it is a regular part of family life.  People wonder why there are fewer attendees at Mass.  Frankly, it’s because attending Mass, learning about the faith, and prayer are not prioritized in many families.  Kids don’t learn how to follow Christ, or that it makes any real difference, so they stop going to church and growing in their relationship with God as soon as they can. 
    God promised Abraham descendants as numerous as the stars.  And while Abraham struggled with seeing how this could happen, God fulfilled His word when Abraham and Sarah conceived Isaac, whose descendants quickly multiplied in Egypt, and who became a nation, a group of people in their own right.  But it went beyond Abraham’s physical descendants.  The Gentiles, the non-Jews, who were joined to Christ through baptism, also becomes descendants of Abraham, because Christ is a son of Abraham.  God fulfilled His promise through physical and spiritual means.
    But for this to happen, Abraham had to have faith in God, and offer to God the sacrifice of his family.  This happened in a very dramatic way through the almost-sacrifice of Isaac on Mount Moriah, as the Letter to the Hebrews reminded us.  For us, this means offering our family to God, not through death, but through their lives.  Is Mass a priority for you as a family, or is it something you get to if it’s not too inconvenient?  Do you pray at home each day as a family?  Do you pray before meals?  Do you share the stories about Jesus, and, as the children grow, the teachings of the Church?  Another great tradition that has been lost is for a parent to sign their children with the sign of the cross on their foreheads before they leave for school or just to hang out with friends.  This simply gesture, which is proper to parents, reminds the children that they belong to Christ through baptism, and asks Christ, along with their guardian angels, to watch over them wherever they go.  The faith becomes as natural a part of life as eating, getting dressed, and going to school or work.
    Children are a great blessing.  They are, not only the future, but the present.  If we wish our society and our church to grow, we should support life, including helping mothers who have little to bring their children to birth.  We should make sure that, in our families, the faith life is not optional, but is part of how we live every day.  And if you can’t have children for whatever reason, find ways to help other parents and other families.  Because families who center themselves on God and not on the lesser goods of the world help make our society and our church better places to be, filled with more of the grace of God.