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.
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.