Our Father, Who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy Name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Amen.

PATER NOSTER, qui es in caelis, sanctificetur nomen tuum. Adveniat regnum tuum. Fiat voluntas tua, sicut in caelo et in terra. Panem nostrum quotidianum da nobis hodie, et dimitte nobis debita nostra sicut et nos dimittimus debitoribus nostris. Et ne nos inducas in tentationem, sed libera nos a malo. Amen.

Today is the Feast of the Most Holy Name of Jesus.

There is a weird trend amongst the uncatechized and the heretical quasi-Christian sects, to adopt Jewish practices as some sort of a sign of piety.  One of the most common is to write “God” as “G-d”.

The name of God, and as we celebrate today in particular the Most Holy Name of the Second Person of the Triune Godhead, Jesus, should be spoken early and often, but always with complete reverence, and with a head bow, and a doffing of the hat for gentlemen outdoors.

For anyone who has ever loved another, to hear the name of the beloved person spoken can make the heart fly.  And, to hear the beloved speak one’s own name is also a great joy.  Such is the case with Jesus Christ, who specifically said, “Greater love than this no man hath, that a man lay down his life for his friends. You are My friends, if you do the things that I command you.  I will not now call you servants: for the servant knoweth not what his lord doth. But I have called you friends: because all things whatsoever I have heard of My Father, I have made known to you.” 

The Most Holy Name, spoken with complete reverence, is a declaration of love, and not only is all of heaven enraptured by its every utterance, but Our Lord Himself, that font of infinite love for each of us, requited or no, loves to hear those who love Him speak His Name with loving reverence.  There it is again – that pesky bit about a “personal relationship with Jesus Christ” that keeps popping up.  Funny, that.

Which leads to…

…a few words must be said about taking the Lord’s Name in vain – that is, violating the Second Commandment. It is strange, but thinking back as a child, I had a family member who used Our Lord’s Name – Jesus Christ – constantly as an expression of disgust and contempt, and delivered it with extreme hyper-enunciated gusto.  And from the time that I was a teeny, tiny child with absolutely no formal understanding of who Jesus Christ was, I knew that That Name was different and sacred, and that when That Name was said like that, that it was a very bad and scary thing, and that the person who said it was to be avoided.  Looking back now at my adult life, I can CLEARLY see that people who used Our Lord’s Name in vain as an expression of disgust should have been immediately rejected by me.  It is a classic example of the axiom “where there’s smoke, there’s fire”.

If you want to get your head around what exactly it is that you’re doing when you use His Name as an expression of disgust, simply replace His Name with the name of the non-divine person you love most in the world.  Then imagine yourself calling out that person’s name as an expression of disgust.  A few years ago now, if you remember, I had a chunk of human poop fall on my foot from a toilet brush in a trashed apartment that I was hired to clean.  Imagine human poop falling on your foot (Eeeewww!!!) and calling out the name of your most beloved person as an expression of disgust.  It’s depraved, right?  No one does that.  Well, your beloved person isn’t Perfect Good and Infinite Love who hung on a cross and died for your sins, now are they?  So how much sicker is it when we do it to God?  Yup.  There’s a reason why the Second Commandment is the SECOND Commandment.

It is a dead giveaway, folks.  A person who uses Our Lord’s name as an expression of disgust is a person who A.) probably doesn’t actually believe in Him, NO MATTER WHAT THEIR POSITION, or B.) does believe in Him and hate Him.  I have seen both.  An example of the latter was a layman who held himself out as a liturgical expert, who would frequently yell, “Oh, sweet JESUS!” or “Oh, sweet Baby JESUS!” as his preferred exclamation of extreme disgust, and turned out to be… wait for it… not just a sodomite, but a sacrilegious sodomite.  The signs were all there.

So, say Our Lord’s Most Holy Name as often as you can, always with love and reverence. To do so is a declaration of belief in the Personal Triune Godhead, His Incarnation, and belief in His almost too-good-to-be-true words, “You are My friends.”  Say His Name with love and let your heart fly at the very sound of it.  Say His Name with love and let Him joy in the sound of His beloved saying it.

Say His Name, because consider that in these dark days of apostasy in the post-Christian West, Our Lord’s Name is said orders of magnitude more frequently as a curse or expression of disgust than it is in loving reverence.  I would guess that just the Irish alone, who are notorious for this terrible sin – they use Our Lord’s name almost as a verbal tick, often in combination with the “f” word – more than equal with their sacrilegious abuse of The Holy Name ALL OTHER UTTERANCES of Our Lord’s Name reverently spoken in the entire world every day.

And finally, the Most Holy Name is not only the shortest prayer, but also one of the most powerful:

JESUS.