Feast of the Holy Name 4.1.09
Have you ever rung a doorbell and been nervous about what sort of reception you would get from the person who answers the door? Or rung a telephone number with a sense of mingled hope and dread?
That feeling might help us understand the different ways in which we can invoke the Holy Name of Jesus. Is He to be loved or feared? Do we march up to Him with full confidence ready to slap Him on the back or do we hide from Him fearing His anger? The answer comes somewhere in between.
He wants us to love Him but in a reverential way. One of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit is ‘fear of the Lord’, which does not mean fear as we normally understand the word, but as giving due reverence to One who is so much holier than ourselves.
He wants our love but we must be reverent at the same time. We must be submissive, contrite, trusting, confiding in our approach to Him; at the same time asking for mercy for sins, and daring to ask for other favours as well (such as our daily bread).
Is it still love if we have to be so careful how we behave in His presence? (This is a point that confuses many modern thinkers. They reason that if we are in our Father’s house, we should be able to do pretty well anything we like. Not so simple.)
Our love for God is more like the love of child for parent, or servant for master. It is not a love between equals, but it can be a very strong love for all that.
We can be at home in His presence but not forgetting His great dignity and importance.
Thus we show reverence such as kneeling and keeping silence and this - far from constraining our love - actually increases it.
So we ring the doorbell of heaven itself, when we call on the name of Our Lord Jesus Christ. It is something we do often, but should never do lightly.
To call a name is to summon that person. Hey, Fred... Fred will look up. Do we say, Hey Jesus? Some do, but it is a mistaken familiarity. We say, O Lord Jesus. Notice ‘Lord’ – it is a statement of respect. He is Lord, we are the servants.
We summon His attention but with due sense of awe that we are able to do such a thing.
We would probably be nervous about addressing a famous person... head of state, movie star... but can be overly bold or casual in addressing Almighty God.
But having said that He does want us to approach Him freely, confiding everything in Him, reaching out like the woman to touch the hem of His garment.
Once having established due reverence we can approach Him unlimited times. In fact He wants us to call on Him all day every day. There is no limit. He does not tire of us provided we come with the right attitude.
If we get the right balance between familiarity and respect we are harnessing great power and great love.
We are summoning the Creator and Saviour of the whole world. There is no problem He cannot solve, no sin He cannot forgive, no grace He cannot provide.
The story of Peter and John healing the lame man in the power of the Holy Name is a foretaste of what could come: Silver and gold have I none, but what I have I give you: in the name of Jesus stand up and walk. What does Peter ‘have’? Not the name, but access to the name. So do we have that. And when we call it is like having the whole universe in our hands. We can do much good if we realize with whom and with what we are dealing.
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