219. The name of “Jesus”
219. THE NAME OF “JESUS”
What’s in a name?
A name should answer to the nature of a thing. . . . Now the names of individual men are always taken from some property of the men to whom they are given: either in regard to time—thus men are named after the saints on whose feasts they are born—or in respect to some blood relation—thus a son is named after his father or some other relation. And thus the kinsfolk of John the Baptist wished to call him by his father’s name Zachary, not by the name John, because there was none of his kindred that was called by this name, as related in Luke 1:59-61. Or, again, from some occurrence; thus Joseph called the name of the first-born Manasses, saying: God hath made me to forget all my labors (Gen 41:51). Or, again, from some quality of the person who receives the name; thus it is written (Gen 25:25) that he that came forth first was red and hairy like a skin, and his name was called Esau, which is interpreted red.
But names given to men by God always signify some gratuitous gift bestowed on them by Him; thus it was said to Abraham (Gen 17:5): Thou shalt be called Abraham because I have made thee a father of many nations; and it was said to Peter (Mt 16:18): Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build My Church. Since, therefore, this prerogative of grace was bestowed on the Man Christ that through Him all men might be saved, therefore He was becomingly named Jesus, i.e., Savior, the angel having foretold this name not only to His mother but also to Joseph, who was to be his foster-father. . . .
The name Jesus could be suitable for some other reason to those who lived before Christ—for instance, because they were saviors in a particular and temporal sense. But in the sense of spiritual and universal salvation this name is proper to Christ, and thus it is called a new name (III,37,2).
Devotion to the “Holy Name” is devotion to Jesus because the name is not just a label. “In the name of” means “in the real presence and power of”. Think of your name signed onto your checks.
“What’s in a name?” Everything: reality, identity, and destiny.
Reality is in a name because God, the creator of reality, also names it, and He gives us the right to name the things in nature that He has designed to serve us. Thus Adam named the animals.
Identity is in a name because since God invented us, we have no more identity outside Him than Frodo Baggins has any identity outside Tolkien.
Destiny, because our Author writes the story of our lives. When God changed someone’s name in Scripture, He changed their destiny: Abram to Abraham, Jacob to Israel, Simon to Peter.
Names are not arbitrary labels. Names are meanings. We grow into our names, or we fail to grow into them; we live out our names, or we fail to live them out.
Jesus (the name which means “Savior” or “God saves”) really is the Savior. That is His reality, that is His true identity, and that is His destiny, the reason He came into the world.
Explore your name. It is no accident that you have it. History (His story) has no accidents.
When we name someone, the name should, as St. Thomas says, “answer to the nature of the thing”, but sometimes it fails to do that. It can be a wrong name. But when God names someone, it is never a wrong name, because His names, and words, and thoughts do not correspond to preexisting things, as ours do (thus they cannot fail to correspond either), but they create the things He names. Thus according to the creation story in Genesis He created everything in the world by naming it. (“Let there be . . . and it was.”)
This applies to both (1) Christ’s “old name”, the name He had from before the beginning of time, which is the Logos or “Word (speech, discourse, language, communication, revelation, expression, truth, mind, thought, reason, wisdom, understanding, plan) of God” and to (2) His “new name”, “Jesus”, when He became our Savior through His Incarnation, death, and Resurrection.