The Feast of the Most Holy Name of Jesus, Tuesday, January 3, 2023

1 John 2, 29; 3, 1-6

If you consider that God is righteous, you also know that everyone who acts in righteousness is begotten by him. See what love the Father has bestowed on us that we may be called the children of God. Yet so we are. The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we shall be has not yet been revealed. We do know that when it is revealed we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. Everyone who has this hope based on him makes himself pure, as he is pure.  Everyone who commits sin commits lawlessness, for sin is lawlessness. You know that he was revealed to take away sins, and in him there is no sin. No one who remains in him sins; no one who sins has seen him or known him.

Devotion to the Most Holy Name of Jesus was spread by the Dominicans and Franciscans through the Middle Ages.  Significantly, St. Albert the Great (d. 1280) preached a homily on the Feast of the Circumcision (January 1) in which he delineated the power of the Lord’s name: “We should note that the word, "JHESVS" [the transliterated capital Greek letters of the name], has six letters.  If six words may be given for each of these letters, we will see how great is the power of this name.  For the first letter, he is the most “just” [Justissimus].  For the second letter, he is the most “honored” [Honestissimus].  For the third letter, he is the most “fair” [Elegantissimus].  For the fourth letter, he is the most “wise” [Sapientissimus].  For the fifth letter, the most “true” [Veracissimus].  For the sixth letter, the most “sweet” [Suavissimus].  By taking these together, we can see how great is the power that lies in this name.”  Local feasts in honor of the Lord’s name cropped up beginning in the fourteenth century.  In 1721, Pope Innocent XIII inserted the feast into the Roman Calendar, to be celebrated on the second Sunday after Epiphany.  In 1913, Pope Prius reformed the Calendar and moved the feast within the Octave of Christmas, setting it on the Sunday occurring between January 2-5.  When the Calendar was again reformed in 1969, the feast was dropped, with the explanation that the naming of Jesus was already celebrated on the Octave Day of Christmas, which was at the same time given to the Solemnity of Mary, the Mother of God.  Pope John Paul II devoutly restored the Feast, placing it on its present date.  The Mass Readings were not altered, however, and so we have as the First Reading an excerpt from the First Letter of St. John, which we will now consider.

“If you consider that God is righteous, you also know that everyone who acts in righteousness is begotten by him.”  This is righteousness as the Lord himself defines it rather than humans, with their varying and unsettled and sometimes unjust definitions. Everyone who is baptized and made an adopted child of God knows him as righteous in a way no one else can, and is capable, through grace, of doing the justice of God.

“See what love the Father has bestowed on us that we may be called the children of God. Yet so we are. The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him.”  While we call the Father, “Father” because he is the origin of the Son, he is also the “Father” of all those joined to Christ in baptism.  Through baptism and through baptism alone do we become his “adopted” children.  This verse would have had particular meaning for the Gentile converts who could not have imagined “becoming” sons of Zeus or Apollo.

“Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we shall be has not yet been revealed.  We do know that when it is revealed we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.”  “What we shall be”: that is, in heaven, with our bodies glorified.  The question of “what we shall be” as a result of union with Christ must have been very pressing for these converts, as it should be for us.  “We shall see him as he is”: to see, then, is to become.  If we are what we eat, in Holy Communion, then how much more we should be like what we see, the glorified Jesus.

“Everyone who has this hope based on him makes himself pure, as he is pure.”  “Hope” is not wishful thinking but a way of life in which the Christian lives in expectation of the Lord's coming.

“Everyone who commits sin commits lawlessness, for sin is lawlessness. You know that he was revealed to take away sins, and in him there is no sin. No one who remains in him sins; no one who sins has seen him or known him.”  Sin is not merely some ritual infraction, or a private failing, but wickedness enacted against God and man.  “And in him there is no sin”: only One who is without sin could take sin away by his own power.  A person who “remains” in him through baptism and the faith and works that flow from baptism, does not sin.  In this way, virtue is seen as a good in itself, and also as a sign of abiding in Christ.  On the other hand, a person who commits sin shows that he “does not know” the Lord. The Greek “to know” must be understood in terms of understanding, believing, and being in a relationship with the Lord.  The sins of which John speaks are mortal sins, committed out of malice, the chief ones being idolatry, adultery, and willful murder.  If we truly want to know Jesus here and in the world to come, we must avoid sin at all costs.