Reflection for the Feast of the Holy Name

A reading from the book of Luke, chapter 2, verses 15-21 

When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, ‘Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us.’ So they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the child lying in the manger. When they saw this, they made known what had been told them about this child; and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them. But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart. The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them. 

After eight days had passed, it was time to circumcise the child; and he was called Jesus, the name given by the angel before he was conceived in the womb. 

Here ends the reading. 

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By his death in 1532, John Islip had been Abbot of Westminster for over three decades. He is remembered today as a great custodian of Westminster Abbey’s fabric, and its last great abbot. He laid the foundation stone of Henry VII’s magnificent Lady Chapel. John Islip is buried here, in a chantry known as the Chapel of the Holy Name. Its ceiling is decorated with repeated carved bursts of the letters IHS – standing for the Holy Name of Jesus.  

Since the middle of the fifteenth century, devotion to Jesus’s name had been hugely popular in English and wider European piety. It brought comfort, soothed distress, gave courage. Sermons were preached exhorting acts of devotion to Christ’s name, it was used in blessings and exorcisms, and the name of Jesus would often be treated with particular care and curation in musical settings of the liturgy. Merely saying the Holy Name would bring the believer closer to the mystery and majesty of God. This was something promoted energetically by Abbot Islip.  

Throughout the season of Advent, we used many titles for Christ. He is Wisdom, Key of David, Dayspring, King of the Nations. But the simplest, and perhaps fullest answer to the question, ‘Who is this King of Glory?’, is simply, Jesus. What does God look like? God looks like Jesus. How does God act? God acts as Jesus acts. What we see Jesus doing, how we see Jesus operating: this is what God looks like, this is how we can recognize and know God. As Archbishop Michael Ramsey wrote, ‘God is Christlike, and in him is no un-Christlikeness at all.’  

At the end of the Gospel used on Christmas morning, St John sums up, ‘No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.’ As we begin a new year, let us do so with the name of Jesus on our lips and in our hearts. At times of uncertainty, change or challenge, of spiritual dryness or uncertainty, that can be enough. Because it is in Jesus that we see God made known; a name above every name, a pattern for living and for loving, the person in whom every turn of the year can have hope.