Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Josép Martinez-Cubero, OHC
Feast of the Holy Name of Jesus - Sunday, January 1, 2023
In the reading from the Book of Numbers we heard this morning, which is one of the most beautiful passages in all of the Hebrew Scriptures, the Holy Name of God is placed on the people as a priestly blessing. “The LORD bless you and keep you; the LORD’S face shine upon you, and be gracious to you; the LORD lift up the divine countenance upon you, and give you peace. So they shall put my Name on the Israelites, and I will bless them.” And since, as Saint Paul writes to the Galatians, we are heirs, the face of God is meant to shine upon us. Ponder for a moment the enormity and the beauty of that! The Holy Name of God is placed upon us too. It is an event of immense love and intimacy to which we can most appropriately respond to with silent awe and gratitude.
The word translated in the passage as “LORD” is the unspeakable Hebrew Name of God, the Tetragrammaton, or the letters (YHVH) pronounced by Christians as Yahweh, but never uttered by Jews. When the Name had to be spoken, it was replaced with “Elohim” (the strong God), or “Adonai” (the Lord) or “Hashem” (the Name). In the Bible we see it most often referred to as LORD in capitalized form where the tetragrammaton would have appeared. LORD, in this sense, is a way of pointing to what is beyond words and cannot be named.
Many mystics believe that we carry the name of God on every breath. That is why it cannot be spoken, because it is the sound of breath. The spirit of God is within us and around us. Every time we take a breath during our chanting of prayers in this church we are breathing in the spirit of God and that same spirit comes out manifested in song, in beauty. So today’s feast presents one of the many paradoxes of the Christian faith- the tension between what can and cannot be named, between saying and unsaying. This is directly connected to the circle of contemplation and action. Contemplation leads to action and action leads back to contemplation, and so forth.
The name Jesus is a translation of the Greek Iesous, which is itself a transliteration of the Aramaic Yeshua, a shortened version of the Hebrew Yehoshua or, in English, Joshua. The most common etymological meaning of Yehoshua is “Yahweh saves.” Upon doing a little digging, however, I was fascinated to find out that other meanings rendered have been “Yaweh is a saving-cry” or Yaweh is a cry for saving.” Cry in this sense means shout. So we could say that one of the meanings of the Holy Name of our Lord Jesus the Christ is “Yahweh shouts salvation.” The reason why I find these meanings so significant is because they seem to describe more clearly the paradoxical tension of the Holy Name.
The Unspeakable becomes a cry for saving. The saving shout points to the unspeakable. The Silence that is beyond comprehension becomes the Word made flesh. The Word made flesh points to the Silence. The reality that is beyond naming and is present in our very breath becomes a name and, as today’s collect states, “the sign of our salvation.”
In first-century Aramaic there was no word for “salvation.” Salvation was understood as being made alive. It concerned the whole person. To become whole was to be transformed from within into our true identity, our deepest freedom that only comes from God’s infinite love for us. This LOVE is always present, always meets us where we are, at our point of need, whatever it may be. LOVE works with what is. There can be no obstacle to our union with this LOVE except our own resistance expressed in our lack of faith. Jesus clearly expressed this when time and again he said to those he had healed: “Your faith has saved you,” or “your faith has made you well.” And by faith, I don’t mean intellectual agreement, but the commitment to stay the course, to live with the questions and the unknown. Lasting faith requires a great deal of humility and willingness to admit and accept our vulnerability.
This vulnerability is modeled for us by the LOVE who would choose to be incarnate in the form of a defenseless baby born to a humble refugee family in an occupied land. There, in a feeding trough, the Reign of this LOVE that is beyond all words breaks into human history and is present to ALL. And ALL means ALL! But when we choose self-preservation, experiencing this life-giving LOVE becomes very difficult. The more we let go of our need to certainty and security, the more we can experience this life-giving LOVE. Saving our life we will lose it. It is only by losing our life for the sake of this LOVE that we will find it. And for that, we need each other. We come from LOVE, and we are made to love one another as the LOVE that is beyond all that is loves us.
During the Christmas season we commemorate and celebrate the paradox of the Incarnation- the Unspeakable is spoken. Today, the Unnameable takes on a name and cries salvation. So, I invite you to return to your breath. Breathe prayerfully, in silent awe and humble gratitude because the Nameless and the Named are One within us and around us in immense love and intimacy. May we all be filled with joy and hope this year, and most importantly, may our whole being be present to the LOVE that surpasses all understanding. ¡Que así sea en el nombre del Padre, del Hijo y del Espíritu Santo!
Amen+
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