Continuing reflection on the Lord's Prayer from 2005; original post here.
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.”
Earlier posts in this series:
Our Father, Who Art in Heaven
Earlier posts in this series:
Our Father, Who Art in Heaven
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