Who’s in a Name?
I seldom call my wife by her name. She has a fine name which has several beautiful meanings depending on where your Google gropes. However, my habit is to refer to her under one of the hundreds of pet names and loving aliases she’s endured during the two score years of loving reality we have shared together. In fact, when I do use her name, it is usually interpreted as a warning that a serious statement will soon be following.
On the other hand, the top two names I bandy about while living 1440 minutes at a time are Jesus and Mary. While not sure who has the edge in this Mother/Son name game, my daily five decades of the Rosary and the Divine Mercy chaplet account for 54 “Marys” and only about half a dozen “Jesuses.” Of course, Our Lord’s name does crop up throughout the day in both formal prayer and the breezes I spontaneously shoot heavenward. Additionally, a mentor planted in my noggin that merely saying the name of Jesus exhibits power and keeps Old Scratch away from the vicinity. Thus enlightened, I find myself inserting the master’s handle everywhere I can in conversation and meditation. Enumerating the names, it may tote up to be a dead heat between J and M for who gets the honorable mention for being most honorably mentioned.
Today in celebration of The Holy Name of Mary, when I read St Bernard of Clairvaux’s homily on the glories of the Virgin Mother1, whose name he equates with “star of the sea,” I am reminded of why I am so “Marynated” in my faith practice. The words of Tobit come to me, “…Honor your mother, and do not abandon her as long as she lives. Do whatever pleases her, and do not grieve her spirit in any way…2” Though I regret the many ways I grieved my own Mother’s spirit, having rediscovered my Creator after a dry and dusty trek through the desert of atheism, I can now connect to the one who birthed my Lord and through the Virgin Mother’s restorative sacrifice, the spirit of Mama is resurrected in my battered heart.
When the name of Mary passes my lips as I stumble through what I whimsically refer to as “my life,” I am reminded that I am not an accident, that I was fashioned in my own Mother’s womb with as much purpose as the Son of God was conceived in Joseph’s betrothed a couple of millennia ago. And though my own mission is more than slightly less earthshaking than Christ’s, it is notwithstanding a contribution to the grand plan of Universal Salvation with each prayerful utterance, act of compassion, and every deliberate step I take toward loving lots and judging not. Every time I choose to be one with all instead of one alone, the spirits of my two Mothers, one from the Midwest and one from Nazareth burst with pride for their earthly son—imperfect, but still under continual renovation. May these moments of joy make up for the grief I have caused them, and may I someday see my name with theirs written in the Book of Life.
