Friday, January 03, 2020

Jesus: What's in a (Holy) Name?

My Dad was a fervent member of the Holy Name Society––not just a card-carrying, pin-wearing, Communion-breakfast organizing member, but a zealous promotor of the medieval mission of the Society. When Dad heard the Holy Name of Jesus misused on the street or in conversation, he would turn the blasphemy into a prayer, "Blessed be Thy Holy Name." By the time I was a novice, Dad was president of the National Association of Holy Name Societies.

So today's feast of the Holy Name of Jesus means something to me personally. 

Granted, this is the "Name above all names" at which "every knee shall bow," if Paul is to be believed (see Phil 2:10-11), since the feast day was only relatively recently returned to the calendar (as an optional memorial) you may find it unfamiliar, and perhaps even a little strange: a feast day for a name? 

But this is not "any other name":

There exists no concept of Jesus. A concept is the expression of an intelligible reality. A concept is what human thinking attains went it has managed to become master of an object by abstracting it from the conditions in which it exists in the world. It is the general symbol under which the particular is subsumed. Of Christ there can be no such concept.
Of him we have only an name – the name which God himself gave him. The words "Jesus Christ" do not connote any general idea but express one single, particular occurrence. They are the name of him once came among us and suffered a death which was our redemption. He alone can reveal what He is.


Romano Guardini



Guardini passage taken from The Humanity of Christ: Contributions to a Psychology of Jesus. There seems to be only one copy available through Amazon, if you have $272 to spare for it! Maybe a seminary library has it on the shelves; (Pantheon, NY, 1964), page 121.

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