Feast of the Holy Name - January 1, 2023

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Josép Martinez-Cubero, OHC

Feast of the Holy Name of Jesus - Sunday, January 1, 2023

Numbers 6:22-27

Galatians 4:4-7

Luke 2:15-21

Click here for an audio version of this sermon

Today the Church celebrates the Feast of the Holy Name. It is the celebration of the great mystery of that which is beyond naming taking a name for our sake.  

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+ 

Feast of the Holy Name - January 1, 2022

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Aidan Owen, OHC

Feast of the Holy Name - Saturday, January 1, 2022

Numbers 6:22-27

Psalm 8

Philippians 2:5-11

Luke 2:15-21

Click here for an audio version of this sermon

In the name of the One God, who is Lover, Beloved, and Love Overflowing. Amen. 

A few years ago, a friend invited me to join a Sufi prayer service in New York. The service—called zhikr, which means “remembrance”—consists in large part in chanting the divine names. After the traditional salat prayers, made in the direction Mecca, about thirty of us gathered in a circle. Facing one another, the sheikha began by intoning, very gently, la illaha illa’ llah. There is no God but God. Or, put more literally and mystically, there is nothing but God. We repeated the phrase back to her, la illaha illa’ llah and began to move our heads and then our bodies very slowly to the left and then back to center. Gradually the chant picked up in volume and pace. It got loud and declarative—there is nothing but God—then soft and sweet again: there is nothing but God. This movement back and forth, up and down, must have gone on for ten minutes or so, before flowing into another of the divine names, and still another, and still another, until it seemed we were all caught up together into the heart of God. 

 I have never, at any other time, experienced anything like that evening of prayer. It was timeless. For the space of our chanting, swaying, and eventually dancing, we were all joined to one another and to God, and time ceased to flow around us. It was both a remembering of our essential unity with God and one another, and a time of forgetting anything but our bodies, our breath, and the humming connection between the particles of our being. 

Pir Ziya Inayat-Khan, the head of the Inayat Sufi order, explains zhikr this way:  

“The essential practice in Sufism is ‘zikr,’ which means remembrance—remembrance of God, remembrance of the source and goal of all being, remembrance of our true home… Flowing endlessly from this One the Sufi discovers a force, an emotion, which will not fit into the narrow boxes of human language. The closest we can come to naming it is to speak of ‘love.’ There is no higher calling than to make one’s life a pure channel for this primal force, the compassion and yearning that has given rise to all that is. Sufism is the path of purification and remembrance by which the heart is made its vessel.”1 

Although the tradition is much quieter and smaller in Christianity than in Islam, we, too, have practices of praying the divine name. Best known is certainly the Jesus Prayer, which, in its fullest version goes like this: Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, have mercy on me, a sinner. This prayer is not mere confession. Nor is it only or primarily an act of contrition or a call for forgiveness. Its goal is not to comfort, but to unite the soul with God. Those who have prayed the Jesus prayer for decades attest that it eventually settles so deeply into the heart, that the heart calls out its love to Jesus every moment of every day. This ancient prayer is said to draw the person back to God, to knit the two together, so that, as in zhikr, we remember that we have never been nor ever will be separate from the One we name. 

The Sufis say that the name Allah is the name that contains all names. We could say the same of the name Jesus. While Paul reminds us that Jesus is the Name that is above every name we should not hear the word “above” in a hierarchical sense. No, Jesus is the name by which we call the Word of God, God’s very substance, in all its creative and mysterious depth, the Word made Flesh, the vast infinitude and mystery of the Godhead, made accessible to our love and our longing. Jesus is the face of God turned toward humankind, indeed toward all creation, to draw us ever deeper into the heart of God.  

I used to really dislike what we call the Prayer of Humble Access, a now old-fashioned devotional prayer used at the time of Communion. But, as my brothers can tell you, my opinions are more strongly expressed than strongly held most of the time. I have come to find great depth and love buried in the words of that prayer, which I’ve modified and condensed to suit my own relationship with God. As I pray it, it goes like this: “O Lord, I am not worthy that you should come under the roof of my house, but only speak your Word in me, and my soul shall be healed.”  

One day recently, the Lord caught me by surprise. The Spirit jumbled up the words I was whispering in heart, and I found the prayer emerging of its own will almost: “O Lord, I am not worthy that you should come under the roof of my house, but only speak my name in you, and your soul shall be healed.” I was asking God to speak my name in God’s soul, and praying for God’s soul to be healed. Tears welled up before I could feel ashamed and abashed at my impertinence, and I was able to rest in the gift and the truth of that prayer.

As much as our prayer is an approach to God, it is much more God’s approach to us. As Paul reminds us, we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit intercedes within us, with sighs too deep for words. Sighs that often sound like the name Jesus. As we pray the name of God, as we repeat our feeble Jesus over and over again, giving voice to our longing for God, just so God is chanting our name in her heart, crying out in longing and in love for each of us, drawing us nearer and nearer in her desire to be—in Julian’s wonderful phrase—“one-ed” to us again. 

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. You might say, in the beginning there was nothing but God—la illaha illa’ llah. Then God, “the prodigal who squanders himself” (in Karl Rhaner’s brilliant phrase) spoke the Word—the name Jesus—shattering the silence. Our own names, our very being, the flesh of our bodies and the ground beneath our feet, is the echo of that name reverberating throughout time and space. As we center ourselves in the name that is above and below and within every other name—Jesus—we can begin to remember once again that there is not now, nor has there ever been anything but God. God with us, God within us, God around us. Nothing but God. 

The Holy Name of Our Lord Jesus Christ - Wednesday, January 1, 2020

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
The Rev. Matthew Wright
The Holy Name of Our Lord Jesus Christ - January 1, 2020

Numbers 6:22-27
Philippians 2:5-11
Luke 2:15-21

Click here for an audio version of this sermon.

Today the Church celebrates the Feast of the Holy Name, which always falls on January 1st, eight days after Christmas, remembering the Jewish custom of circumcising and naming a male child on the eighth day. And so today we are celebrating the name of Jesus, but this feast also takes on a secondary meaning in light of our first reading. In the passage we heard from the Book of Numbers, we were given the priestly blessing: “The Lᴏʀᴅ bless you and keep you; the Lᴏʀᴅ’s face shine upon you, and be gracious to you; the Lᴏʀᴅ lift up the divine countenance upon you, and give you peace. So they shall put my Name on the Israelites”—on my people. The Holy Name of God being placed on the people.

Now the word translated in this passage as “LORD” is actually the unspeakable Hebrew Name of God, the Tetragrammaton, or the letters Yod-Heh-Vav-Heh (YHVH), sometimes pronounced by Christians as Yahweh, but traditionally never uttered by Jews. And so when the Name had to be spoken, it was replaced instead with Adonai, Lord, as a way of pointing to or speaking the Unspeakable. And it’s even been said by some of the rabbis that this name of God is actually the sound of the breath, and that this is why it’s essentially unspeakable, because we are actually speaking and carrying the name of God on every breath.

And so today’s feast holds, and celebrates, this tension between naming and the Unnameable, between saying and unsaying, which is a paradox that lies at the heart of all mysticism—how do we speak of the Unspeakable?

Now the name Jesus itself is a translation of the Greek Iesous, which, of course, is not the name his parents actually gave him. Most scholars assume that name would have been the Aramaic Yeshua, a shortened form of Yehoshua or, in English, Joshua. And etymologically that name, it begins with Yah, pointing to YHVH, the Unnameable, and it ends with shua, which can be traced to the verb meaning “to rescue” or “save” or to the noun for “a saving cry” or “a salvation shout.” And so this name itself holds the tension we’re speaking of—Yah, YHVH, the Unspeakable, speaks, cries out, shouts, to save us.

And salvation in the biblical languages is connected to the word for healing or wholeness. “Your faith has saved you” can also be translated “your faith has made you whole.” And so again, Yah-shua—the Unspeakable, present in our very breath, is our wholeness. A name pointing to the Nameless. This entire Christmas season is about the unfolding of this paradox—that somehow, in Jesus, the Unspeakable is spoken, the Infinite becomes finite—and that reality continues unfolding and deepens today when the Unnameable, for our sakes, takes on a name.

This paradox between saying and unsaying, naming and unnaming, is captured beautifully in an early Christian text called The Gospel of Philip, which was probably written in the late 2nd century—too late to be given canonical status, but a window into what early contemplative Christians were contemplating. It’s not a Gospel in the traditional sense of telling the story of Jesus; instead, it’s a collection of Christian mystical teachings. And in it, we’re given these somewhat shocking words:

“The words we give to earthly realities engender illusion, they turn the heart away from the real to the Unreal. The one who hears the word God does not think of what really exists, but a concept or an image of the Real. The same for the words Father, Son, Holy Spirit, Life and Light, the Resurrection and the Church, and all the rest. By these words we are made to think not of what exists, but of what does not exist, though these things could point to what really exists.”

A powerful early Christian reminder that all our words, including God, are simply pointers. Which means that there’s always the risk that we will mistake the pointers for Reality itself, and that we’ll end up worshiping our own mental constructs rather than the living God. And so Philip here, rather mercilessly, rips all of our words away from us—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Life, Light, and Church!

But then, after his demolition project, with great tenderness, he gives them all back to us; the passage continues: “But Truth brought names into the world for our sake, and one cannot refer to Truth without names. Truth is one, but its names are many for our sake, to teach us lovingly this one thing through many things.”

Today we celebrate this great mystery that the Unnameable took a name for our sake: “After eight days had passed, it was time to circumcise the child; and he was called Jesus…” Now this text always pairs in my mind with another, and since I’ve already brought in The Gospel of Philip I might as well bring in The Gospel of Thomas, which is simply an early collection of sayings of Jesus. And one of the sayings goes like this, “Jesus said, ‘A person old in age will not hesitate in asking an infant, seven days old, about the Place of Life, and will find life.’”

Here we have someone at one end of life going to someone at the other end—at the beginning—in order to discover (or remember) what life’s about. And significantly, Jesus says that this is “an infant, seven days old.” “After eight days had passed, it was time to circumcise the child…” “A person old in age will not hesitate in asking an infant, seven days old…” A child seven days old is still in the state before naming, before taking on religious identity—in that original freshness, straight from God. And so when we hold these two texts together, we see this delicate dance between naming and unnaming, the seventh day and the eighth day. On the eighth day, Jesus, for our sakes, takes on a name… and then the Named One points us back, to the one seven days old, to the Nameless. We say, and we unsay. We name and we un-name. This is the great mystical paradox.

But today we celebrate and give thanks for the naming. Today the Nameless takes a name, Jesus. And I think that this is perhaps not only for our sakes, but for the sake of the Nameless as well. There is a need, a longing, flowing in both directions. The Nameless, I believe, delights in taking on a name—in taking on all these names [gesturing to the congregation]. “So they shall put my Name on my people.” And while the Nameless delights in being named, we are invited into the delight and fullness found in returning to the Nameless, to silence, to the breath.

And the Name of Jesus holds this paradox, open wide in both directions—Yah!—the Unspeakable—shouts salvation! The Name of Jesus, paired with the breath, is of course one of the Church’s earliest prayers—what we usually call the Jesus Prayer. It’s most common form today is “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me,” but in its earliest forms it seems to have simply been the name itself: Yeshua, Jesus, God saves, the Unspeakable makes whole.

St. John Chrysostom wrote in the 4th century of this prayer:

“The name of the Lord Jesus Christ, descending into the depths of the heart, will subdue the serpent holding sway over the pastures of the heart, and will save our soul and bring it to life. Thus abide constantly with the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, so that the heart swallows the Lord and the Lord the heart, and the two become one.”

And the two become One. The Nameless and the Named become One. And so I invite you in the brief silence that follows this sermon, to breathe the Name of Jesus. I learned the Jesus Prayer in a very simple form from Sr. Helena Marie of the Community of the Holy Spirit—simply breathing in “Jesus” on the in-breath, and breathing out “Mercy,” on the out-breath. Breathing in the love held in that name, breathing out mercy and compassion for all creation. If this form of the prayer calls to you, or if you’re drawn to or familiar with another, take a few moments with it now, breathing in this amazing reality: that today the Unnameable takes a name for our sake, and delights in placing the Divine Name on each one of us.

Amen.

The Feast of The Holy Name: January 1, 2018

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Randy Greve, OHC
The Feast of The Holy Name - Monday,  January 1, 2018


To hear the sermon in its fullness click here.

Br. Randy Greve, OHC 

The best way to begin to take in the wonder of Christmas is to appreciate it within the context of the Christian year. The seasons of the Church calendar carry us along in rhythms like the ebb and flow of the Hudson River. 

Sometimes the season, like the river, is placid, sometimes churning with the change of tide or some great wind, moving this way and that. Liturgically, the ebb and flow can be described as something like preparation and action or anticipation and event. I like to describe the calendar as having the energies of receiving and responding.

Roughly speaking, Advent, Christmas, and Lent point the lens toward the life of the soul, the receiving seasons. Epiphany, Easter, and Pentecost turn toward our living out their calls in our world, they elicit a response. Each prepares for the other as we yearly reenact Jesus’ life which is itself a prime example of ebb and flow. He engages in solitude and community, fasting and feasting, work and rest. When Jesus is in the womb, we are quietly preparing for his birth. When Jesus is born and that birth evokes great rejoicing in heaven, we sing and celebrate right along with the angels. The word in the seasons of reception is “be open, listen, allow, and take the gift offered”. Seasons of responding say “get up, leave your mat, and follow, proclaim, give, serve”.


In contrast to a culture that highly values knowing, controlling, doing, achieving in a seemingly non-stop rush of movement, the Church year frames a way of being that is inherently counter-cultural – an integrated and holistic Christian life – that believes in action, for sure, but also takes into account the need to go inward, to still the rush and noise and honor the call of soul free from distraction and noise. While it is easy to get the feeling of accomplishment and usefulness when we are doing tasks and moving forward with work, the inner seasons remind us that it is just as important to allow God to work in us through quiet, stillness, and prayerful reflection.

We are squarely in Christmastide, remembering especially today the holy naming of Jesus. Conditioned as we are to go and do, times of receiving require intentionality. Liturgy, then, teaches us how to be fully human. Liturgy sanctifies things, dispels the illusion of our categories of profanity and secularity and allows the divine light that permeates God’s good creation to shine. Liturgy sanctifies time - days, weeks, and the year – placing us in a story with ebbs and flows. We enact with word, music, symbol and movement what it means to be in this moment. Liturgy creates space to dwell with the big questions of what we desire, who we are, and who we are becoming in the light of receiving and responding.

God loves diversity. God made some of us to be receivers, some responders. It is natural to gravitate toward the seasons that fit us. Maturity is the capacity to undergo the seasons that are most unlike me, treating their message as equally important. At times I need to hear, “You brood of vipers!” At other times, “Comfort, comfort my people.”  Stay in the ebb and flow and you will get both. Which statement is true? The ebb and flow is that I am both loved and accepted by God and called to repent. Most of us tend to be skeptical about one or the other. I am called to take seriously both the self-examination of Advent and the joy of Christmas.

A concentrated image of the ebb and flow is present in the gospel today. The birth narrative of Luke is all about emphasizing the particularity of this baby who is announced and praised, and visited, and today named. We have moved from God is coming to Jesus is here. Luke gives us the story from both the divine and human perspective. The Lord makes known and receives praise. Humans see and hear and recognize and respond. That is the spiritual life at its essential core, but contained in those simple sentences is a lifetime of ups and downs, struggles and joys, blessings and loss.The comment about the Blessed Virgin in the gospel is helpful as we seek to be faithful to our spiritual journeys in the light of the good news. She has been through much already. 

The annunciation when she agreed to the news of the angel to be the mother of Jesus, the scandal of her pregnancy, the meeting with Elizabeth, the long journey to Bethlehem and the birth, and now the visit of the shepherds. What does she believe about what has taken place? How does she take it all in? Luke says she “treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart”. She is continuing to be formed by the story into which she has been called. And this precisely is the gift of Christmas, of incarnation, a season of reception. Inspired by her and with her we can be treasuring and pondering. Those two verbs form an axis of tension, another ebb and flow that together fuel the creative energy of joy.

Treasuring is remembering and guarding the story, the faithful allegiance to the truth of what has happened – a Savior has been born to us, Christ the Lord. Treasuring is the bold prophetic language of the Magnificat. Mary has experienced the undeniable reality of divine power, has heard the angelic voice, and knows that through her child the hope of Israel and the entire world is breaking into history. But her knowing is not an invitation to stop searching. She sees through a glass darkly, as do we all. She appreciates that salvation birthed in her and living for her is also and always mystery. She intuits the space where theology that condescends to human apprehension gives way to pure praise in the realm of the eternal mystery of God. Mystery honors God’s mighty acts by continuing to allow their power and wonder to inform our identities.

That is the practice of pondering. “Pondering” is a vague English translation of what in Greek is literally “together-casting”, reflecting on or drawing associations between words and events and responses. Treasuring needs pondering to keep us humble and open to wonder. Pondering needs treasuring to ground us in history, in incarnation, and in the right use of divine truth. With both ways of seeing we bring our hearts and minds to name this child.

And so Christmas as reception emerges in the heart of Mary. Take her response into your heart. Stop, be still, look, listen, read the story, read it again, let it read you. Step into the ebb and flow of it, let it teach you how to be human, how to be. “But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart”. Amen.

Holy Name - Jan 1, 2016

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Peter Rostron, OHC
Holy Name - Friday, January 1, 2016

Numbers 6:22-27
Galatians 4:4-7
Luke 2:15-21

Happy new year by the civic calendar.  Welcome to 2016.  Today’s feast is about naming. Biblically, naming is all about the theology of identity, consecration, and vocation.  Holy Name, always eight days after Christmas as was the length of time between Jesus’ birth and the event of his circumcision and naming, is the Jewish ritual initiation into the covenant by a physical sign and the giving of a familial or religious name.  The name Jesus means "Yahweh will save".  It was given by the angel Gabriel to Mary and Joseph.  This feast occurs within a series of holy days of the Lord’s life which note and celebrate the Christ come among us as human and revealed to the world as Messiah – Christmas, Holy Name, the Baptism of the Lord, Epiphany, and the Presentation.   Each event and the Church’s liturgy thereof highlights an aspect of the life of Christ presented in the Gospels which gives us a glimpse into the mystery of the incarnation and its explosion into the world.  Today, as Jesus receives his name which is promise and mission, so we remember that we are recipients as well and receive our names – our identities and vocations anew.

Scripture is loaded with meaning-names and name-changes.  God’s name, biblical shorthand for God’s personality and character, is a frequent means of referring to God.  The scriptural importance of names and naming is noted in the fact that the word “name” occurs 944 times.  With biblical characters, often it is the changing of a name that provides a before and after contrast, highlighting the significance of the character’s identity.  A turning point of self-understanding or a conversion within one person and reverberating out to the community can change an Abram to Abraham, Sarai to Sarah, Jacob to Israel, Cephas to Peter, Saul to Paul.  Names matter.  The new name sets a new agenda.  Although more frequent in ages past, from time to time a monk of our Order will take a name at the first profession of the monastic vow that connotes a new identity - the past is gone, a fresh identification is taken on. 

In this culture we have largely lost the connection between name and identity.  A new baby's name is just as likely to come from a book of baby names as from some family history with the name.  Or sometimes the ego goes wild in the form of naming.  Former boxer George Foreman, now famous for his electric grill, has 12 children: five sons and seven daughters. His five sons are George Jr., George III ("Monk"), George IV ("Big Wheel"), George V ("Red"), and George VI ("Little Joey").  Guess who this family is about! 

Rather than receiving a name identity, the empire is organized around the sorry task of categorizing - defining status, value, and worth based on whatever external criteria are deemed most important – appearance, money, position, talent, intelligence, or the lack thereof.  Identity and value are not given by God but earned or inherited.  This kind of judgment shows up as labelling or “name-calling”.  To call someone a name that is not their name is to attempt to impose an alternate identity.  Whenever I fall into sin and label someone and thus de-name them, I have decided to dehumanize and embrace the lie that I have a right to treat someone as subservient to me - less than human.  And even if I am getting better at biting my tongue when tempted to speak my labels, I think name-denying things about other people – “wrong, useless, stupid, lazy, stubborn, forgetful, failure.”  When repeated often enough, the other person becomes my label so that I am unable to see anything of him or her but my label.  Then I have succeeded at mentally stripping him or her of dignity as a person for me.

A label, a category, or a judgment is the opposite of a name.  It is the profaning of a person's name, and therefore their gifted identity.  The culture is very good at this and to the extent that we swim in it we get polluted by this prevailing attitude.  Labelling and name-calling is a sport among many politicians, commentators, and others who engage in the perpetual struggle of "us-versus-them".  The chatter of much news coverage does not hesitate to de-name and de-humanize in the service of victory for my side.  We are going to hear much de-humanizing speech in this election year of 2016.

But there is good news.  The good news is that we do not have to live in the illusory and demeaning world of labels, we can live as named people.  We are called to live as the people of God, the Church.  God is in the naming business so the Church is in the naming business.  That is how God has chosen to bestow honor to each and every one no matter the circumstances or externals of life. We as the Church are at our best when we remember that we each have names and then treat one another accordingly.  And because we are in the naming business on God’s behalf, we as Christ’s body resist every force, structure, act, movement, ideology and methodology that engages in de-naming and dehumanizing anyone.  The same love that compels us to reach out toward the marginalized and oppressed – the de-named in whatever their distressing disguise – also compels us to refute the evil of de-naming within ourselves and in those around us.  It is easy to rationalize our labels, join the crowd, demonize the other, ally ourselves with those who agree with us and hide behind the excuse that everybody is doing it.  Sadly, there are some within the Church who dirty the holy name of Jesus by their insults of their brothers and sisters.  As a young teenager said at youth group once, “People who hate other people are terrible, I hate them.” 

Your name and my name are sacramental and not available for abuse.  In the liturgies for holy baptism, confirmation, holy matrimony, ordination, and prayers for healing we call our brothers and sisters by their God-given names in order to remember and make explicit the presence and worth of the persons before us, persons who are receiving God’s grace in those moments.  These acts actualize the reality that the Church is in the naming business and therefore against the labelling business.  The Church engages the mission of God of seeing people, welcoming people, engaging and forming people – all people - not creating or reinforcing labels that foment enmity, suspicion, fear, mistrust, or walls that preserve the us and them of the world. To know and call someone by their name is to acknowledge their worth and value and therefore to take a stand for connection and community and against the demeaning and divisive forces of this world.

Living as named people is not a utopian vision of problem-free ease.  Dialogue and disagreement are normal and natural aspects of community life within the body.  Living with each other as named people does not mean we will agree with each other or even like each other all the time.  We are not called to passive relativism that minimizes our own ideas and feelings for the sake of some surface level mutual accommodation and tolerance.  Living with names is the intentional, sometimes difficult work of recognizing that as we all desire to grow together, move forward together, we each must bring our unique name and voice and gifts to that journey.  When all are offering themselves for the good of the body, life happens and we see each other as the persons we are.  Yet temptation will raise its head so we must remember that within the body nobody gets to de-name or hijack the mission, nobody gets to claim power or status over another as a way to demean someone else’s presence and voice.

At the dawn of a new year, let us resolve that in our various contexts – families, churches, workplaces – that we will resist the path of collective tribalism and remember and see and relate to one another as people named and called and valued by God. Amen.

Holy Name - Jan 01, 2015

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Robert Magliula, OHC

Holy Name, Thursday, January 01, 2015

Numbers 6:22-27 
Galatians 4:4-7 
Luke 2:15-21 

The creche in the monastery church

We have been observing the feast of the Holy Name since the middle of the 6th century, and for good reason. What’s in a name? Ancient people had a great respect for names. They believed that a portion of the personality of the individual resided in the name; the more powerful the person, the more powerful the name. In South Africa, when an American brother joins the community there, the Xhosa observe his personality and behavior before giving him a Xhosa name that describes him. 

There is power in a name. We have the name of Jesus set before us as we begin this New Year. What does it tell us about God, about ourselves? We were named and sealed as God’s Beloved in our baptism. As the Epistle reminds us, we were claimed, adopted, forgiven, and made members of the Body of Christ. We are born from Love in order to love. Love is where we came from and Love is where we’re going. God sees us for who we are; nothing more and nothing less.

That this feast is celebrated within the Octave of Christmas is no accident. God truly became Emmanuel, “God with us.” In Jesus the divine and human are forever one. In the Incarnation God took on all human nature. We flow into God: God flows into us. It is the nature of love to flow. Our true identity and our deepest freedom comes from God’s infinite love for us. No barrier of majesty or distance divides us from God. God has drawn near to us unabashedly as an infant. In this infant, the defenselessness of God is apparent. God comes without weapons, because God does not wish to conquer from the outside, but desires to win and transform us from within. God assumed this vulnerability in order to lead us to union with the self and with God. 

The Gospel today has two distinct parts: the visit of the shepherds, and the circumcision and naming of Jesus. The shepherds, in response to the angels, risked leaving their flocks to seek Jesus. After finding Mary, Joseph, and the child, they are convinced of the arrival of the long awaited Messiah, and go again, to proclaim it. 

In accord with Jewish custom, eight days after his birth, Jesus was circumcised. This ritual initiated males into the community of Israel. It was a sign of the covenant. The name given Jesus is both common and extraordinary. It is an Aramaic form of Joshua---a common Jewish name meaning “God saves”. In the original Aramaic there was no word for “salvation.” Salvation was understood as a bestowal of life. To be saved was to be made alive. Jesus is the Life Giver. 

We’ve spent the weeks of Advent trying to be present to the present, to wake up to a deeper encounter with ourselves and our God made flesh. We live most of our lives in the past or future. It’s how our minds work. If we are to experience the ever present Christ, it must be here and now. We have two examples in the Gospel today. The shepherds respond immediately to the angels’ invitation to go and see. Joseph and Mary respond in the present to what is expected of them as good Jews. The saying is true that “God comes disguised as our life.” Everything in life is to be welcomed, as somehow the expression of God’s will. Christ is always coming. God is always present. It’s we who aren’t.

Jean-Pierre de Caussade, a 17th century French Jesuit wrote a spiritual classic called Abandonment to Divine Providence. He writes “every moment we live through is like an ambassador that declares the will of God to us.” There is no more better way to seek the will of God than moment to moment, to see what this moment offers me is the grace of God. If we did nothing more than that, he says, we will attain the highest levels of transformation. Things won’t change, we will. 

God uses everything, even our mistakes. De Caussade writes, “We must accept what we very often cannot avoid, and endure with love and resignation things which could cause us weariness and disgust. This is what it means to be holy.” This is what it means to be awake: to be constantly willing to say that God could even be coming to me in this. Even this! Just this! 

I think we all shrink from this challenge because we know we can’t do it on our own. We only succeed by God’s grace now and then. We often don’t want God as God is; we want God as we imagine or would like God to be. But God always works with what is. That is why there can be no real obstacle to union with God except our own resistance. God can and will use everything, absolutely everything, even the worst things.  Augustine wrote: “In my deepest wound I found you, Lord, and it dazzled me.” People who are present will experience the Presence. It’s largely a matter of letting go of our resistance to what the moment offers us. To be here, now, is what de Caussade calls “the sacrament of the present moment.” 

Pondering the name of God and learning again what it means is an excellent beginning for a new year. Through the name of Jesus, the power of God is at work to reshape all personal and social circumstances that distort God’s purpose. We make our new beginning today with the assurance that God is present. As we gather around the altar, in the Name of Jesus, may we, with the Bread and Wine, be transformed and be strengthened to live now as the Beloved.  +Amen.

Holy Name - Jan 1, 2013

HolyCross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Bernard Jean Delcourt, OHC

Feast of the Holy Name – Tuesday, January 1, 2013

Snow and sun on the meadow - December 30, 2012

Numbers 6:22-27 

Galatians 4:4-7 
Luke 2:15-21 

Today we rejoice in our brotherhood with Jesus of Nazareth. We celebrate our relationship on a first name basis with the human face of God. And through Jesus, we exult in knowing the God who is beyond all describing and defining.

We sing our adoption by the One whom, through Jesus and with the prompting of the Spirit, we now dare to call “Abbah, Father, or even Dad” if we wish to emulate Jesus.

*****

Obedience is a red thread throughout Luke's account of the Nativity of Jesus. The shepherds eagerly welcome the news of his birth and become striking witnesses of the Godly life: they go, they see, they make known.

They do find Mary, Joseph and baby Jesus in a Bethlehem stable. They witness to them what God has announced in the fields outside Bethlehem, where generations before a young David shepherded Jesse's flock. And beyond the stable, they make known to others what has been made known to them. God saves and God is amongst us.

*****

Mary too is an exemplar of obedience to God's desire. She treasures in her heart the words she received from God and the wondrous acts that surround her son's birth.

She meditates on it all, in utter reliance on God and obedience to the unfolding of God's will. Amongst the pondering in her heart, she probably wonders about the name chosen by God for her newborn son: Jesus.

*****

Jesus received his name from God. In Luke's recounting, a messenger of God appeared to a young maid betrothed to an earnest carpenter in a little town near the Sea of Galilee. The angel told Mary to name her first-born child Jesus. Mary listened to the angel's words and accepted them.

*****

Joseph too came to accept God's word and to be an agent of God's desire.

In Jesus' time, a Hebrew father would recognize a son as his own at the time of circumcision. This would happen on the eighth day from the birth.

The circumcision was a symbol of dependence on God and utter obedience to God's Law. The circumcision would make the child's belonging to Israel complete.

At that time, the father would name the child and so recognize him as his own.

*****

In this circumcision, Mary and Joseph are showing obedience to God by naming the child Jesus as ordered by the angel.

And Joseph is showing further obedience to God by fully assuming the earthly fatherhood of Jesus in the eyes of Israel.

*****

In consenting to the Incarnation and in giving the name Jesus to their son, Joseph and Mary, helped us bridge a tremendous chasm in how we relate to the divine.

On one side of the bridge is the Old Testament view of a God who shall not be named for fear of abusing God's name. A God who appears in columns of fire or smoke and is likely to have a vindictive streak.

On the other side of the bridge, we get to meet that same God whom Jesus calls Abbah. Eventually, we come to realize we do meet God in Jesus.

*****

In the Hebrew culture, the name of God was to be feared. Jews would come to use substitutes in order to not take God's name in vain.

Using the name of deities in order to obtain one's wish was run-of-the-mill magic in the Mediterranean peoples. But the God of the Jews was not to be used as a magical prop.

As a result, God's name, represented by its four consonants, were most often spoken as “Elohim” (the strong God), “Adonai” (the Lord) or “Hashem” (the Name). Our own Christian scriptures follow that convention by referring to the LORD in capitalized form where the tetragrammaton would have appeared.

*****

With the arrival of Jesus, God chooses to approach us as one of us. And not only as one of us, but as one of the least of us.

Jesus is born among the poor and dis-empowered, adored by the poor and the foreigners. In so doing, God chooses a way of interacting with humanity that is entirely novel.

We are shown that God cares for humanity at its most essential, and that God is not trying to impress us through our fascination for power, control and material wealth.

Already in the conditions of his birth, Jesus indicates strongly where God wants us to put the focus of our love. Whatever we'll do for the least of these, we will have done for him.

*****

“Jesus” is now the name for God we are most familiar with. It comes to us from latin. It was itself a transliteration of the name Iesous used in the Greek form of our scriptures.

But in all likelihood, Jesus answered to the Hebrew form of his name, Yeshua.

It was and is a beautifully loaded name. The Hebrew roots of the name Yeshua evoke a number of meanings such as: God delivers, God rescues, God is my help.

The predecessor to the form Yeshua would have been Yehoshua. This would have been the name that Joshua, son of Nun, would have answered to. Joshua was Moses' helper and took over leadership of Israel at Moses' death to lead them into the promised land.

So we can see that from the get go, the name Yeshua would have evoked a lot of messianic overtones in and of itself. It is a sign chosen by God to help us see how Jesus always points to God as our only source of salvation and redemption.

*****

So the baby named Jesus, in the fullness of time, will take us from being fearful subjects of an angry ruler, to being children of the Living God.

Yeshua, God Saves, came into the world to redeem us from slavery to sin and to show us the face of a loving God.

Yeshua, God Delivers, brought us close to God in a way that had never been experienced before.

Yeshua, God Is My Help, brought us adoption as sons and daughters of God, as brothers and sisters of His.

No mere prophet, teacher or religious leader could have done that. It had to be the Son of God.

*****

Jesus is the Emmanuel.

And remember, he is with us always, to the end of the age.

Have no fear; just as the angel enjoined the shepherds, I enjoin you to go find the least of us, see how they live, see how God lives amongst them and make it known.

Bring the gospel where it matters. God Saves; it's in Jesus' name.

Have a fruitful and serene year 2013. Happy New Year!

Amen.