What’s in a name?
A name could be just a label: canned “TUNA” and not canned “CHICKEN”; “John SMITH” and not “John DOE.” But that’s not the real point of a name. “Name” bespeaks relationship. To withhold one’s name, to remain deliberately a-nonymous, is to refuse relationship, to cut off future possibilities, and even to thwart memory. On the other hand, how meaningful it is to hear our name from the lips of a person who knows us well, and who treats one’s name like a treasure. Like Mary Magdalen in the garden, we may not even recognize the other until we hear our own name pronounced. That sound brings to the fore the whole weight of the relationship: its history, its depth, its extent, its yet-to-be-realized hopes. Amazingly, the Our Father hints that we can, as it were, awaken all this in the very heart of God when we “call upon the name of the Lord” (cf. 1 Cor. 1:2), the name by which God has introduced himself to us.
May your name always be uttered by those who love you: “Hallowed be your name.”
3 comments:
"Hallowed be Thy name" and "Called by name" are connected. Calling one by his/her name is a hallowed act. Because each of us is called by name by God, to call one another by that name is sacred. Each of us is given our names by the One Whose name is hallowed, the One who "I am."
Lisa
cullensdaughter@aol.com
There's also an Orthodox spiritual teaching that every time the name of Jesus is pronounced, he is, as it were, summoned.
I was relating this to the consecration at Mass. The name of Jesus is given to us, so to speak, to be our access to his real presence at all times. This also makes it all the more horrific when the name of our Lord is used casually or as an expletive.
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