As we continue our initial days in this new year of 2026, we are given the blessing and the grace to contemplate the wonderful Name of our Lord and Saviour, our God and light, Jesus Christ.
In the Gospel today, from the Evangelist Saint Luke, we hear about what happened when Our Lord was presented in the Temple. We are told that “when eight days were completed for His circumcision, the Child was named Jesus, the Name given Him by the angel before He was conceived in the womb” (Luke 2:21).
First of all, we must remember, my brothers and sisters, that angels are magnificent beyond our imagination. Even one angel is beyond what we can fathom. Exorcists, for example, describe how, though there are myriads and myriads of angels beyond counting, each one magnifies God’s power in very special and unique ways. Each one, as we are told by exorcists through exorcisms, is a species unto itself.
To put that into perspective, we are seven or eight billion people in the world, and yet we all belong to one species, the human species. We all belong to one kind of reality, one kind of entity. The angels, on the other hand, each single one of them, is a different species from the others.
As incredible as that sounds, they remain beneath God, at His service, as messengers when He sends them with something important to reveal to one of us here on earth. This is what happened with Joseph. That means that the Name of Jesus is actually given to Him by God Himself; the angel was merely delivering the message.
And how do we know this? We know it from our first reading, where Saint Paul speaks about what we call in theology the kenosis, the emptying of Himself: “He emptied Himself, taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness; and found human in appearance, He humbled Himself, becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross” (Philippians 2:7–8).
And now listen to this: “Because of this, God greatly exalted Him and bestowed on Him the Name that is above every name, that at the Name of Jesus every knee should bend, of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Philippians 2:9–11).
My brothers and sisters, if God is going to name His Son—if God is going to name His Son who shares His divine nature—or more to the point, if God were to name Himself coming into the world, what Name would He give Himself, if not Saviour? He is the Saviour – the Saviour of all humanity.
And my brothers and sisters, devotion to this holy, precious Name of Jesus was spread far and wide by a Franciscan saint, Saint Bernardine of Siena. For this reason, on the 3rd of January, we celebrate this beautiful feast in the Franciscan Order and throughout the world: the Feast of the Most Holy Name of Jesus.
But my brothers and sisters, take heed, because the Name of Jesus is not a formula, but a Person. Jesus never treats His Name as a magic word. To invoke His Name is to invoke His Person—His authority, and more importantly, His living presence in our lives.
When He said, for example, “ask the Father anything in My Name and He will give it to you” (cf. John 16:23), He was addressing the Apostles who loved Him, who were in a real relationship with Him—a loving and trusting relationship with their Lord and Master.
It is not as though we can live sinful lives, live as if God does not even exist, and then suddenly have recourse to the Name of Jesus to heal a family member or to obtain some other blessing or miraculous intervention. His Name is not magic. His Name implies relationship: a relationship between Him and the Father and the Holy Spirit, and a relationship between Him and each and every one of us.
My brothers and sisters, through the most holy, precious, and beautiful Name of Jesus, may you all be blessed. And through the intercession of our Blessed Mother Mary this year, may you receive abundant blessings. In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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