Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
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“O God, our Governor, how exalted is your Name in all the World!” Amen.
The feast of the Holy Name of Jesus is one of several observances on the Church’s calendar known as “feasts of our Lord.” Others include the Presentation, the Transfiguration, the Nativity, and, the biggest one of them all, the Sunday of the Resurrection, or Easter Sunday. Like these other special days, the feast of the Holy Name helps us to meditate on and better understand a specific aspect of Jesus of Nazareth’s earthly life and teachings. Feasts of our Lord, as well as the feasts of the saints, invite us to pause and reflect on the unique role each of us plays in fulfilling God’s vision for the Church and the world. After all, Jesus’ first-century ministry was for our benefit, not his, and his special feast days help us see how we can become partners in that ministry right now in our own time and place.
But what’s really in a name? I mean, why the name ‘Jesus’ specifically? As with all names in the Bible, Jesus’ is rich in meaning and indicative of God’s particular job for him in the greater scheme of things. In Saint Luke’s Gospel, the assignment of Jesus’ name, which means “The Lord Saves” in Hebrew and Aramaic, is revealed to Mary by the Archangel Gabriel during the Annunciation. And so, right from the beginning, the naming of Mary’s child carries an important sacramental significance, and hints about what the future has in store for him.
Jesus’ name is no less meaningful today than it was back then. As probably all of us can attest, just hearing the name of Jesus is sure to evoke some kind of emotional response. Its mention can just as easily summon powerful memories based on how it’s been used with and around us (and possibly even against us) in the past. If Jesus’ name has been used rightly to teach us about love for God and neighbor, generosity of spirit, mercy, and service toward others, the memories are likely mostly positive ones. Sometimes, though, Jesus’ name is used wrongly, and then the memories around it aren’t usually so good, such as when it’s appropriated to incite fear or justify greed, domination, and violence. These are frankly blasphemous ways of using Jesus’ name, and today’s feast reminds us of our duty to restore it to its true, divinely appointed purpose of proclaiming God’s unconditional love for everyone.
In Sermon Fifteen on the Song of Songs, the twelfth-century monastic reformer, mystic, and early Cistercian, Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, reflects on this transformative message of love inherent in the name of Jesus, saying:
“In some mysterious way the name of
[God’s] majesty and power is transfused into that of love and mercy, an amalgam
that is abundantly poured out in the person of our Savior Jesus Christ. The
name ‘God’ liquefies and dissolves into the title ‘God with Us,’ that is, into
‘Emmanuel’ … Servants are called friends in this new way, and the Resurrection
is proclaimed not to mere disciples but to [beloved sisters and] brothers [of
Christ].”
As we can see in this quote, Saint Bernard marvels at God’s willingness – eagerness, even – to forgo majesty and power by dwelling with us humans in the person of Jesus. The utterly ineffable – and, ultimately, unnamable – Eternal God becomes true flesh and blood, fully relatable, and definitively namable. In short, the entire mystery of the Incarnation becomes accessible to us in the name of Jesus.
So, too, as we have heard and sung this morning, does the psalmist marvel at God’s desire to draw all of us into the fullness of creation, the source and summit of which is God’s own name; and, amazingly, to entrust us as stewards and heirs of the Divine Wonders, the greatest being the Divine Name itself. Truly, in spite of all our flaws, each of us by our very existence is shown to be utterly, undoubtedly, and unconditionally loved by God. Don’t ever let anyone tell you otherwise.
But Jesus’ name isn’t meant simply to be a statement or even a summary of deeper truth, though it certainly is both of those. Rather, just as Jesus of Nazareth Incarnates and shows forth in his person our very God, Jesus’ name in its very self is an outpouring of his ongoing ministry among and through us. Using the example of oil, a basic and multifunctional staple of twelfth-century life, Saint Bernard goes on to expound on the efficacy of the Holy Name, saying:
“The likeness between oil and the name of [Jesus] is beyond doubt … I hold that the likeness is to be found in the threefold property of oil: it gives light, it nourishes, it anoints. It feeds the flame, it nourishes the body, it relieves pain: it is light, food, medicine. And is not this true too of [Jesus’] name? When preached it gives light, when meditated it nourishes, when invoked it relieves and soothes.”
When I stop and reflect on these words of Saint Bernard, I’m amazed at how true they really are. I can think of times when Jesus has been preached as the Way of Love, and I have seen God, those around me, and even myself in a new and gentler light; when I have managed to quiet myself in my cell or in the woods or by the river and meditated on Jesus as a devout Jewish mystic with a profoundly personal experience of God burning within him to be shared, I have indeed been renewed and nourished in my own spirit; and when I have uttered the name of Jesus the Great Physician in times of sickness, despair, brokenness, and trouble, I have never failed to feel the healing balm of Gilead at work deep within my sin-sick soul.
The name of Jesus, which is poured out by God as a source of healing, truth, and light in the world, is a reminder for each of us of our vocation to be sharers of that Good News; we are all siblings and partners of Jesus, not merely disciples and certainly not slaves, and so we are both commissioned and empowered to join in Jesus’ ministry of proclaiming the message of God’s love, and to do so boldly and joyously in the name of the one who first taught us. And, having received the Name of Jesus as our inheritance, we may, like the shepherds in Luke’s Gospel, glorify and praise God for what we have heard and seen.
But, it’s important that I add just one more thing. For as wonderful as all this may sound, we all know that sometimes it’s a lot easier said than done, especially when we’re weighed down by life, or struggling with challenging circumstances. And if that’s where any of us finds ourselves this morning (or this week, or this decade), that’s okay. When singing Glory to God in the Highest happens to feel just a bit too much, then simply doing as Mary does is enough for us, treasuring all these words as best we can and pondering them in our hearts.
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