Feast of the Holy Name 3.1.10
The Holy Name of Jesus has a character all of its own, being of all the names in the world the only one that carries power to heal the sick or cast out demons, and to be also the most blasphemed name by those who hate or fear it.
Like the Person Himself the name cannot be ignored - we must be either for Him or against Him.
If we invoke His name it is something we cannot do lightly; we must be prepared to commit to a serious encounter. On the other hand, for all its seriousness, there is no limit to how often we can contact Him. Indeed He wants us to call on Him constantly, and for every need great or small, as well as thanking and praising Him.
The name was chosen by God Himself: it means ‘God saves’. The name in this case expresses the main identity of the Person. He comes as one who saves; it is His primary purpose in coming.
Every time we address Him we are implicitly asking for salvation, acknowledging we need saving.
If we call on Him in the right way we are immediately receiving some of that salvation. To invoke His presence is to put ourselves in contact with His power. We speak of certain people as having a powerful ‘presence’; they cannot be easily ignored. Well, Our Lord is far and away the most powerful of all and the least easily ignored.
He is of such importance that the stance we each take towards Him will determine our fate for all eternity!
We will enjoy eternal life or be cast into eternal damnation simply on the basis of whether we are for Him or against Him.
This might seem taking matters too far, and those who speak of Our Lord as just another prophet or holy man would protest that He is not that important. He is just one more player on a crowded stage of religious figures.
Many would routinely list Him with Gandhi and Martin Luther King and (more recently) Nelson Mandela! We have many saviours in the modern mindset. All this is just setting up smokescreens to hide from the fact that Jesus is the only one worth worrying about.
We can admire other figures and even follow them to some extent, but Jesus must be the last word and the ultimate focus. If we admire others it can only be that they lead us to Him (thus Saints).
Why is He so important? Simply because He is God and there is only one God and if that one God comes to earth as Man we must take Him seriously.
It is only God who can give or withhold eternal life. The Saviour is also our Judge. He does not want to condemn; but He will condemn those who do not accept Him as Saviour.
The divinity of Jesus seems to be the crucial point of dispute. If we think of Him as God we cannot fail to bow down before Him and speak His name with great reverence. But if we think of Him as just one more also-ran among the complicated history of religions in the world then we will treat Him lightly.
So, we assert and affirm His divinity at every opportunity.
Some go further than ignoring Him; they positively hate and blaspheme Him. These are acting at the bidding of the devil who will do anything to discredit Jesus.
Many who blaspheme are probably only being careless and do not have the full malice of what they are saying. But once we understand the power of this Name we would rather choke than speak it irreverently.
Instead we speak it with honour and the more humbly we invoke Him the more of His power will be evident in our midst.
Blessed be His Holy Name. Blessed be the Name of Jesus, true God and true Man.
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