What’s in a name?
Remember the famous line from Shakespeare’s play?
Indeed a lot is in a name. Right?
We are proud of our names.
We know our names.
We even sometimes know the history of our names.
In England, names were given to associate with the family.
For example, Peterson was the son of Peter.
Williamson was the son of William.
In the Irish tradition, it is “Mac” which means “son.”
So McGuire is the son of Guire, which is a watchman.
Often times, the name is taken from your profession.
So you have Taylor, Smith, Butcher and so on and so forth.
Every tradition or every culture uses names in a different way
and passes the names on in different ways.
But names are important.
When we name something, we tend to claim it.
We tend to say, “This is our child and we name that child.”
That is part of the reason why it is our child.
Today, we celebrate the really important name for Mary.
It is Mary, the Mother of God.
The unfortunate part is it is a bit of a translation error.
We get in a lot of trouble with this name;
with our protestant brothers and sisters
because they do not have the same level of reverence
for Mary as the Mother of God.
But truth be told the better translation for “Mother of God”
is actually “God Bearer” from Theotokos,
which is the “Holder of God.”
Notwithstanding, Mother is such a powerful image,
it is hard to let go because it is so beautiful an image.
The image motherhood is that of caring, of love
and so we continue to hold onto it for those obvious reasons
even though we now know God bearer is who she is.
If we think about that name, “God bearer’ for a moment,
we all have a name; all of us.
In the second reading today, it tells us what that name is;
we get the name Christian.
And this means we are Christ followers.
That is what we claim when we call ourselves Christians.
And the second reading tells us what that means.
It tells us that we are adopted children of God.
So we are now not only Christ followers
but we are children of God.
Often that is called the family of God;
or it goes one step further: the people of God.
We have a lot of names that we give ourselves
but all of them have to do with connecting to our image and likeness of God;
that we have this image of Christ inside of us.
And that because of Christ we bear his name
and we show forth in our actions,
in what we do, we claim to be his, to be God’s.
What are we to do with that?
I think we do exactly what Mary does here in this reading
because she did not understand it all either.
She could not have understood it all at that point.
But she believed it all.
So what she did was she took all these things
and pondered them or reflected upon them in her heart,
which is a beautiful expression:
“Reflected upon these in her heart.”
This requires of us and you should not be surprised
with what you will hear me say next;
it requires of us to be men and women of prayer.
We have to be men and women of prayer
if we are going to be like Mary and reflect upon these things.
Well, where are we going to do that?
We have to take out the time to do that.
And that time is going to be time away from our liturgical celebrations,
which is one form of prayer; but the form of prayer
that I am talking about is this quiet, meditative prayer of reflection.
What are we going to reflect on?
We have just passed a tough year.
I do not think we all need to go through
the list of what we have just gone through.
But we should reflect upon what 2020 has been for us;
and not all the negative things;
not all the things that have been taken away from us;
but what are all the things we have received.
What are we grateful for in the year 2020?
A list of five or maybe ten things you could list;
maybe go each month and get 12, one for each month.
What is the highlight of God’s grace in this last year for each of us?
No matter what happens God is always with us in every moment,
God is showering us with his grace.
Sometimes it takes time for us to pause and
reflect upon what is it that God has given us through his grace.
If we could sit with that list of five or ten or whatever it is that you come up with
and do what Mary does and hold it and reflect upon it.
I know today is famous for New Year’s resolutions
and we promise all these things
and by the time we get to mid-January,
we have given up because we have already broken
our New Year’s resolutions.
But if there is one resolution that I would ask you to do
it is to add ten minutes of silence to your prayer.
If you are praying 20 minutes, go to 30 minutes.
If you are praying no minutes then go to ten minutes.
If you are praying 30 minutes, go to 40 minutes.
And what am I asking you to do in that ten minutes?
It is to listen to what Christ would like you to change;
to not make a resolution but to go to Mary and
go to Jesus and say here is the top ten of the last year.
What about my life do you want me to cooperate with you in changing?
There is always change going to happen.
So why not cooperate with God’s plan?
So Christ and God will want us to change in some way.
Let’s carry what we have had from 2020
and hold it up to the Lord and say,
“Lord what is it that you want from me?”
Answer in the way Mary did: “Let your Will be done.”
And then to carry and hold those in this year ahead.
We can then be better bearers of God’s name,
better Christians that we claim to be by being the holder of God.
Then we can be an actor and cooperator with his Will in our life.
Let us hold and keep all these things, reflecting them in our heart.
