Holy Name of Jesus

Disrespectful to use names for God?

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Happy Labor Day everyone! I always think how the baby shower my family through for me when I was pregnant with my first baby was held right around now, and had “Happy Labor Day!” on the cake. Such a funny long-ago memory that doesn’t seem that long ago! My boys keep asking me what Labor Day is, so I finally looked up so I could be precise with my answer; this is what I found, in case it’s helpful for you:

“Labor Day, the first Monday in September, is a creation of the labor movement and is dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers. It constitutes a yearly national tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country.” (source)

Now back to your regularly scheduled programming!

A reader asked a fantastic question:

“I really like the name Theo. I am concerned that Theo translates almost directly to the Greek word for God. Should I be concerned that it is in any way disrespectful to use as a standalone name?“

I love these kinds of questions, because the intention behind them is so lovely and respectful! There is a history of not using certain names because it was thought to be disrespectful to do so. Our Lady’s name was one such; Rev. Patrick Woulfe wrote in Irish Names and Surnames in 1923:

“[Mary as a given name] was very slow in creeping in to the Western Church. It is only about the middle of the 12th century that we find the first instances of its use in Europe, whither apparently it had been brought by the devotion of the crusaders. Even in Ireland, there were few Marys until comparatively recent times. I find only a few instances of the use of the name before the 17th century. At present one-fourth of the women of Ireland are named Mary. The ordinary form of the name, however, is Máire, Muire being used exclusively for the Blessed Virgin Mary, and, therefore, the most honoured of all names of women.”

(I wrote more about the name of Mary in Ireland here.)

Back to Theo, I posed a question on the blog a while ago about why the name of Jesus isn’t used by English-speaking parents for their sons, and one of you responded with a link to this article, which contained this:

“How come English-speakers don’t name their children Jesus? In observation of the commandment against misusing God’s name, English and American Protestants have historically taken a more conservative view on religious names and reserved the name Jesus for the son of God. In England, Mary was considered too sacred a name for common use until about 1300, and it wasn’t until the past 100 years or so that naming a baby after an angel ceased to be sacrilegious. Around World War II, many Protestants started giving their sons names like Michael and Gabriel; before then, the bearers of those names would have been identifiable as Irish Catholics or German Lutherans.

On the other hand, Jesus has been a common first and last name in Iberian countries since at least the 14th or 15th century. For many Catholics from Spanish and Portuguese cultures, naming a child is considered a way to honor God rather than a violation of a commandment. (Similarly, Catholics differ from Protestants in their interpretation of the commandment against worshipping images.)“

I think that last bit — “For many Catholics from Spanish and Portuguese cultures, naming a child is considered a way to honor God rather than a violation of a commandment” — is the key here. Unless a parent’s intention were to name his or her son Theo because they believed their son to actually be God, I would imagine any connection to the meaning of Theo in the choosing of it for their son would be only one of reverence.

How would you respond to this reader? Do you agree with my opinion that using “just Theo” isn’t disrespectful? Have a great Monday!

Articles I’ve written on related topics:

Names “foreign to Christian sensibility” at CatholicMom.com

Good-Intention Baby Naming at Nameberry

My book, Catholic Baby Names for Girls and Boys: Over 250 Ways to Honor Our Lady (Marian Press, 2018), is available to order from ShopMercy.org and Amazon — perfect for expectant parents, name enthusiasts, and lovers of Our Lady!

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Names to honor the Sacred Heart of Jesus

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Today is the solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, which is celebrated every year on the Friday after the octave of Corpus Christi, nineteen days after Pentecost. As a result, its date changes every year. It doesn’t feel like a coincidence to me that it falls on the same day as Juneteenth this year, of all years. What a lovely and specific reminder of Jesus’ love when so many are hurting, especially since, as CatholicSaints.info noted, “Love, consecration, and reparation are the characteristic acts of this devotion” to the Sacred Heart. I also read this article at the National Catholic Register today: Did You Know the Sacred Heart Devotion Was Established As a Plague Raged? As Covid-19 numbers are going up again for many parts of the country, knowing of the specific connection of the devotion to the Sacred Heart to the end of the bubonic plague in the city of Marseille is especially comforting:

“The story of a Visitation sister, Venerable Anne-Madeleine Remuzat, and her continuation of work begun in the previous century to promote devotion and reparation to the Sacred Heart, together with Bishop Henri de Belsunce’s zealous care for the Catholics of Marseille during a terrible contagion, is inspiring as Catholics worldwide now implore God to end the current pandemic.”

Yesterday, Maria from Molin & Co. asked in her Instagram stories for ideas of boy names to honor the Sacred Heart, and I was sitting in the car at the orthodontist waiting for my boys to be done with their appointments, so I was able to jump right on that! I gave her some ideas I thought of right away, but then researched a bit more later and came up with some additional ideas. They break down into four categories (all name meanings come from Behind the Name):

Names that refer to “heart”

Girl
Cora: Cor is “heart” in Latin; this name is often given in honor of the Immaculate Heart of Mary for the same reason

Cordula: While Cora doesn’t technically (etymologically) come from the Latin cor, Behind the Name says that Cordula actually does!

Ruby: For the redness of the Sacred Heart; see my spotlight on Ruby

Boy
Caleb: One theory (not the dominant one, unfortunately, but still possible) is that Caleb may come from the Hebrew for “whole, all of” plus “heart”

Hugh, Hugo: They mean “heart, mind, spirit” (because of the “spirit” meaning, I included them in a listing of names for the Holy Spirit)

Thaddeus: One theory is that it means “heart”

Names that mean “holy”

Girl
Ariadne: Means “most holy” in Greek

Glenys: From the Welsh for “pure, clean, holy”

Naomh: Means “holy, saint” in Irish; I spotlighted it here

Sancha/Sence/Sens: These names all mean “holy”

Boy
Jerome: This literally means “holy name” (maybe I should have named the blog “Jeromes”? 😂)

Sancho/Santius/Sanz: See Sancha et al. above; this is the masculine variant (Sancho Panza from Don Quixote is a famous literary bearer of the name, and his daughter was variously referred to as María Sancha, Marisancha, Marica, María, Sancha and Sanchica — all references to Holy Mary)

Names for Jesus

Girl
Christina, Christine, Christiane, Christa, etc. (and their K- spellings): All referring to Christ. Christi is Latin for “of/belonging to Christ” (e.g. Mater Christi: “Mother of Christ”)

Emmanuelle, Emmanuela: Referring to Jesus

Boy
Christopher, Christian, etc.: Referring to Christ

Emmanuel: Ditto

Joshua: The name Jesus comes from a Greek translation of the Aramaic Yeshua (Joshua)

Names of saints who had a special devotion to the Sacred Heart

This article on the Saints of the Sacred Heart is great — it gives a little explanation of why each person is included in the list. It includes some lay people as well, but these are the Servants of God (SOGs)/Venerables/Blesseds/Saints it includes:

Bl. Anna Magdalena Rémuzat (the same Anne-Madeleine Remuzat mentioned above)
St. Louis Grignion de Montfort
St. Veronica Giuliani
St. Alphonsus Liguori
Bl. Bernardo de Hoyos
SOG Pierre Picot de Clorivière
Ven. Pio Bruno Lanteri
St. Madeleine Sophie Barat
St. Michael Garicoïts
St. Peter Julian Eymard
St. John Bosco
Bl. Catherine Volpicelli
St. Frances Cabrini
Bl. Benigna Consolata Ferrero
St. Maximilian Kolbe
St. Faustina Kowalska

Others I’ve come across include:

SOG Julia Greeley (I shared more about her earlier this week)
Bl. Solanus Casey (I just posted about his family’s names yesterday)
Bl. Karl, Emperor of Austria, and his wife, SOG Zita, Empress (read this beautiful story for more info)
St. Gertrude (one of the others who shared name ideas in response to Maria’s request noted that St. Gertrude’s devotion to the Sacred Heart pre-dated that of the most famous Sacred Heart saint, Margaret Mary Alacoque; read more here and here)

Others from the stories

Other followers of Maria’s offered some ideas for boys that I thought were inspired! They include:

Amory (because of amor meaning “love”)

Claude (for St. Claude de Columbiere, who spread devotion to the Sacred Heart and was also the spiritual director of St. Margaret Mary Alacoque)

Corey, Corman, and Cormoran (because of the cor connection, which make me also think of Cormac)

Gary (for St. Gertrude — the “Gar” in Gary and the “Ger” in Gertrude come from the same Germanic element! Gerard and Gerald share that as well)

Graceson (because of the “grace” connection)

John/Jack (after St. John Eudes, who spread devotion to the Sacred Heart and is represented with the hearts of Jesus and Mary)

Leo (after Pope Leo XIII, who wrote the encyclical Annum Sacrum, on the consecration of the whole world to the Sacred Heart)

Pio (Pius IX established the feast of the Sacred Heart; Pius XII wrote the encyclical Haurietis Aquas “On Devotion to the Sacred Heart”)

Richard (for the Lionheart! So clever!)

Rory (for the red of the heart — Rory means “red king,” which adds an extra layer of significance in regards to the Sacred Heart!)

Zacharias (“someone the Lord thought of and favored”)

Can you think of any other names you’d add to this list of names to honor the Sacred Heart of Jesus? Have you named any of your children in honor of His Heart, or do you know anyone who has? Have a great weekend!

My book, Catholic Baby Names for Girls and Boys: Over 250 Ways to Honor Our Lady (Marian Press, 2018), is available to order from ShopMercy.org and Amazon — perfect for expectant parents, name enthusiasts, and lovers of Our Lady!

Happy Feast of the Holy Name of Jesus! (And redemption of Black Friday Special No. 3)

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I just posted a [not fun] Friday question a few minutes ago, completely forgetting to wish you all a happy Feast of the Holy Name of Jesus! I’ve written several things about His Holy Name, which I link to in this post, and I also just discovered that the diocese of Raleigh, North Carolina has the Holy Name of Jesus as one of its patrons! (The other is the Sacred Heart of Jesus — those are some heavy hitting patrons!) So happy patronal feast day to all you Raleigh-ites!

Today is also the day that I start accepting consultation requests from those of you who took advantage of my Black Friday Special No. 3. I look forward to hearing from you!

My book, Catholic Baby Names for Girls and Boys: Over 250 Ways to Honor Our Lady (Marian Press, 2018), is available to order from ShopMercy.org and Amazon — perfect for the expectant parents, name enthusiasts, and lovers of Our Lady in your life!

Advent and Christmas names

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Christmas Eve is just a week away and my boys are EXCITED! Seeing their wonder and awe is the absolute best. ❤

I’ve done several posts in the past with ideas for Advent and Christmas names, which I wanted to be sure to share here again, in case you have a little one coming any time! Check these out:

Names for a Christmas Baby here on the blog

Names for an Advent Baby at CatholicMom

Holy Family Names for Christmastime Babies at CatholicMom

Names for a Yuletide Babe: The O Antiphons at Nameberry

There’s also this tag for “Christmas names” here on the blog, which brings up birth announcements and name spotlights for names that I think can be Christmas-y, and for generally getting your mind focused on the birth of Jesus, there’s this piece I wrote last year for CatholicMom that I’ve been thinking about recently, regarding His naming.

If it’s helpful for naming a boy, I’ve always loved the combo Luke Emmanuel for a Christmas baby — if my Luke had been born around now, it would have been a strong contender.

My book, Catholic Baby Names for Girls and Boys: Over 250 Ways to Honor Our Lady (Marian Press, 2018), is available to order from ShopMercy.org and Amazon — a perfect Christmas present for the expectant parents, name enthusiasts, and lovers of Our Lady in your life!

Happy feast of the Holy Name of Jesus!

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I love when things like this happen: My December CatholicMom column was moved to after Christmas because of the topic I wrote about (the naming of Jesus), but I didn’t know what day it was being moved to, and yesterday I discovered that it was posted last Friday, so I planned to link to it here today, and when I was scrolling through Facebook this morning I saw that today’s the feast of the Holy Name of Jesus! How perfect that I was already planning to share an article about His Name on the feast of His Name!

This is my new article: Glory to the Newborn King.

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It links to an older one I’d written on the power of Jesus’ Name (Planned Parenthood vs. the Holy Name of Jesus); I also did a post a while back on some of the saints who were promoters and lovers of the Holy Name of Jesus (THE promoter of the Holy Name), as well as a post discussing some of the names of Jesus (March for Life: Comfort and confidence in the Holy Name of Jesus). And then today I looked up “prayers to the Holy Name of Jesus” and found this beautiful Litany of the Holy Name of Jesus, which my littlest guy and I just said together. His Name is such a beautiful thing to contemplate today, on Its feast and while we look forward to the Epiphany!

March for Life: Comfort and confidence in the Holy Name of Jesus

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I really wanted to write about the March for Life today, I feel like my heart’s right in D.C. with the marchers who are braving the cold and snow and ridicule and hatred and silent media all for the babies. And I thought — what better way than by writing about the Holy Name of Jesus? I found such comfort in the Holy Name during the height of the Planned Parenthood Videos expose, even writing about it in my August CatholicMom.com column: Planned Parenthood vs. the Holy Name of Jesus. I also looked into devotion to the Holy Name a little more, and was delighted to discover that the saint my alma mater was named after, St. Bernardine of Siena, was THE promoter of the Holy Name! And then yesterday my mom and I were talking about Jesus’ different names and what they mean, specifically Christ, Emmanuel, Jesus, and Messiah. So I thought I’d do just a small bit of info about each:

Christ
From Behind the Name: “Means ‘anointed’, derived from Greek χριω (chrio) ‘to anoint’. This was a name applied to Jesus by early Greek-speaking Christians. It is a translation of the Hebrew word מָשִׁיחַ (mashiyach), commonly spelled in English messiah, which also means ‘anointed’.”

There are a lot of names connected to Christ that are familiar, like Christian, Christopher, Christine/a, and some that are unfamiliar, like (according to the DMNES): Christophera, Christred, Christwin, and Christwina! I think my favorite version is Christiana.

Emmanuel
From Behind the Name: “From the Hebrew name עִמָּנוּאֵל (‘Immanu’el) meaning ‘God is with us’. This was the foretold name of the Messiah in the Old Testament. It has been used in England since the 16th century in the spellings Emmanuel and Immanuel, though it has not been widespread. The name has been more common in continental Europe, especially in Spain and Portugal (in the spellings Manuel and Manoel).”

I know you’ll laugh, but ever since seeing Manny the Mammoth in Ice Age, I’ve though Manny was a pretty great nickname for a boy, and I love the meaning of Emmanuel. It would be great for a Christmas baby! I love the feminine variants Emmanuelle and Emmanuela as well — lots of good nickname options! Emma, Ella, Nell(a), and even Manny (my husband’s godmother’s name was one of the Emmanuel variants [I’m just not sure which] and she went by Manny).

Jesus
From Behind the Name: “English form of Ιησους (Iesous), which was the Greek form of the Aramaic name יֵשׁוּעַ (Yeshu’a). Yeshu’a is itself a contracted form of Yehoshu’a (see JOSHUA). Yeshua ben Yoseph, better known as Jesus Christ, was the central figure of the New Testament and the source of the Christian religion. The four Gospels state that he was the son of God and the Virgin Mary who fulfilled the Old Testament prophecies of the Messiah. He preached for three years before being crucified in Jerusalem.”

“Yeshua ben Yoseph” always jumps out at me — it’s equal parts so cool and also so common. Does that make sense? I always think of Him as Jesus, which equals God in my mind; seeing Yeshua ben Yoseph makes Him seem so “normal.” Which of course he was, both, God and Man, fully. What an awesome mystery.

This is the Joshua bit: “From the Hebrew name יְהוֹשֻׁעַ (Yehoshu’a) meaning “YAHWEH is salvation”. Joshua was one of the twelve spies sent into Canaan by Moses, as told in the Old Testament. After Moses died Joshua succeeded him as leader of the Israelites. As an English name, Joshua has been in use since the Protestant Reformation. The name Jesus comes from a Greek translation of the Aramaic short form יֵשׁוּעַ (Yeshu’a), which was the real name of Jesus.”

Messiah
See Christ above. The entry at Nameberry references that Tennessee judge who ruled that parents couldn’t name their son Messiah “because there’s only one” — it was overturned, and in fact the name Messiah was #298 in 2014!

I was delighted to discover recently that the month of January also happens to be devoted to the Holy Name of Jesus! I’m sure it’s no coincidence — even if the organizers of the March for Life didn’t realize that in the beginning, we all know Heaven did.


So I have a small giveaway today! I have three copies of Fr. Paul O’Sullivan, O.P.’s book The Wonders of the Holy Name, and how I’d like to do it is offer them first to any of you readers that might be at the March for Life today. I know you’re probably not reading this if you are! So I won’t choose the recipients until Sunday evening, in hopes that gives enough time to get home, thaw out (!), and catch up on your blog reading. 🙂 Second, if none of our readers are marchers, I’d like to give them to any of you who personally know a marcher, who can pass it on to that person. Finally, if there are no marchers and no friends of marchers, I’ll pick randomly from those who comment on this post. It’s a powerful little book! And I love the dedication: “This booklet is lovingly dedicated to the Sweet Mother of Jesus. No one loves the name of Jesus as she does.”

“Therefore God highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth …” (Philippians 2:9-10).

From the footnote in my bible (Ignatius Catholic Study Bible, Second Edition RSV): “heaven … earth … under the earth: The three principal realms in the worldview of ancient Israel (Ex 20:4). Homage will come from all creatures great and small — the angels and saints above, the family of man and beasts spread over the earth, and the dead and the demons of the underworld.”

(You might also be interested in reading my post from the summer: I would imagine Planned Parenthood fears names, which doesn’t mention the Name of Jesus but totally should. It does reference Call Him Emmett and the 50 Million Names project.)

Good name posts and beautiful Name products

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I loved both of these recent posts on the Baby Name Wizard site:

Are Presidential Candidates Running Away From Their Own Names? (It’s all about nicknames! I was most intrigued by Rafael Edward “Ted” Cruz, Cara Carleton “Carly” Fiorina, and Piyush “Bobby” Jindal — Laura explains how each nickname came to be. The comments were good too.)

15 British Baby Names That Just Don’t Exist in America (Fascinating list! “The top 1,000 names lists from England and Wales include scores of names that don’t register in American stats at all. Let me emphasize that: these names aren’t just rare, they’re statistically nonexistent. Given that the most recent U.S. stats tally more than 30,000 names from Aaban to Zyyon, that’s saying something“)

And in light of my posts on the Holy Name of Jesus (here and here) I was loving these products from the Catholic Company:

An IHS Coffee Mug, where IHS is “the Holy Name of Jesus as it was written in the Gospels, is the first three letters of the Greek Spelling of the Holy Name of Jesus. The name “Jesus”, in Greek, is translated “ihsous.”” (Personalizable!)

IHS Coffee Mug

A Personalized IHS Prayer Card Holder, for all those holy cards we all have that “accumulate over time, often being stuffed in Bibles, missals, or prayer books which causes them be lost or forgotten.” (Personalizable!)

Personalized IHS Prayer Card Holder

These beautiful Jesus Beads, which I’d never heard of, but I loved this: “Jesus Beads originated in the tradition of the Orthodox and Eastern Catholic Churches. Called a chotki, the strand may have as many as 100 beads or as few as 25. The chotki is traditionally used as a silent “breath prayer”, with “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God” prayed on inhalation and “have mercy on me, a sinner” prayed on exhalation. This is known as the Jesus Prayer, or the Prayer of the Heart, which invokes the Holy Name of Jesus and implores His divine mercy. (You can read about the “Jesus Prayer” in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraphs 2665-2669)”:

“Prayer to Jesus

2665 The prayer of the Church, nourished by the Word of God and the celebration of the liturgy, teaches us to pray to the Lord Jesus. Even though her prayer is addressed above all to the Father, it includes in all the liturgical traditions forms of prayer addressed to Christ. Certain psalms, given their use in the Prayer of the Church, and the New Testament place on our lips and engrave in our hearts prayer to Christ in the form of invocations: Son of God, Word of God, Lord, Savior, Lamb of God, King, Beloved Son, Son of the Virgin, Good Shepherd, our Life, our Light, our Hope, our Resurrection, Friend of mankind. . . .

2666 But the one name that contains everything is the one that the Son of God received in his incarnation: JESUS. The divine name may not be spoken by human lips, but by assuming our humanity The Word of God hands it over to us and we can invoke it: “Jesus,” “YHWH saves.”16 The name “Jesus” contains all: God and man and the whole economy of creation and salvation. To pray “Jesus” is to invoke him and to call him within us. His name is the only one that contains the presence it signifies. Jesus is the Risen One, and whoever invokes the name of Jesus is welcoming the Son of God who loved him and who gave himself up for him.17

2667 This simple invocation of faith developed in the tradition of prayer under many forms in East and West. The most usual formulation, transmitted by the spiritual writers of the Sinai, Syria, and Mt. Athos, is the invocation, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on us sinners.” It combines the Christological hymn of Philippians 2:6-11 with the cry of the publican and the blind men begging for light.18 By it the heart is opened to human wretchedness and the Savior’s mercy.

2668 The invocation of the holy name of Jesus is the simplest way of praying always. When the holy name is repeated often by a humbly attentive heart, the prayer is not lost by heaping up empty phrases,19 but holds fast to the word and “brings forth fruit with patience.”20 This prayer is possible “at all times” because it is not one occupation among others but the only occupation: that of loving God, which animates and transfigures every action in Christ Jesus.

2669 The prayer of the Church venerates and honors the Heart of Jesus just as it invokes his most holy name. It adores the incarnate Word and his Heart which, out of love for men, he allowed to be pierced by our sins. Christian prayer loves to follow the way of the cross in the Savior’s steps. The stations from the Praetorium to Golgotha and the tomb trace the way of Jesus, who by his holy Cross has redeemed the world. “

Jesus Beads

Finally, Devotion to the Holy Face by Mary Frances Lester. I know it’s not specifically about the Holy Name, but I just discovered today that St. Therese’s full religious name was Therese of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face, so how coincidental to see this!

Devotion to the Holy Face

Happy Thursday night y’all! (Does anyone else wish it was okay for non-Southerners to use y’all? It’s so useful! I find it creeping into my thoughts though I usually edit it out of my speech … but not tonight! Also, aren’t Thursdays the best? My dad always says that Thursday’s the best day of the week because no one really minds going to work on Friday, since it’s the last day of the week and has a party feel of its own, so Thursday night especially feels kind of like the beginning of the weekend. I suppose that’s the idea behind Thursday nights being Going Out nights in college? So then maybe consider this your happy hour. 🙂 )

(Okay, one more story — my husband went out for a brief drink after work tonight with colleagues, and when he got home I meant to say, “How was happy hour?” but what came out was, “How was holy hour?” Bahaha! I’m still laughing!) 😀

My newest CatholicMom.com column

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You all know I’m struggling with these Planned Parenthood videos so you shouldn’t be surprised that my August column at CatholicMom.com (up today) tackles the issue again (my previous post here on the blog, I would imagine Planned Parenthood fears names, was the most shared of all the posts I’ve ever written, by a landslide, so I know you’re all feeling it too): Planned Parenthood vs. the Holy Name of Jesus.

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(I blogged about the Holy Name the other day too, especially in regards to Its major promoter, St. Bernardine of Siena.)

Of course I had no way of knowing when I wrote it that the seventh video would be released today, but I’m glad my article’s coinciding with the release of this new information of horror: babies alive after an attempted abortion, with still beating hearts, having body parts harvested, including “how the abortionist made [the “former procurement technician with Planned Parenthood partner StemExpress” who revealed this info] harvest the baby’s brain by cutting his face open with scissors.”

This is a bit from a historical novel I just read (Winter of the World by Ken Follett, about the Second World War, including the Nazis):

image

This particular bit is about how the Nazis rounded up disabled children — and adults too, though it doesn’t reference them in this particular passage — but most of the German citizens either didn’t know it or didn’t believe it.

Then there’s this, from the same book:

imageIt explains more about that very program:

“The program was called Aktion T4 after its address, 4 Tiergarten Strasse. The agency was officially the Charitable Foundation for Cure and Institutionalized Care … Its job was to arrange the painless deaths of handicapped people who could not survive without costly care. It had done splendid work in the last couple of years, disposing of tens of thousands of useless people … The problem was that German public opinion was not yet sophisticated enough to understand the need for such deaths, so the program had to be kept quiet.”

Of course parallels have been drawn for a long time between the Holocaust and abortion, but still I was struck by the similarity between what I was reading and what Planned Parenthood (and all abortionists) is and has been doing. In fact, our government does sanction the killing of handicapped children. Healthy children too! The particular horrors have been kept quiet for some time, and there are those (one example here) that seem to think the same as what’s being said in this passage — that the graphic revelation of horror shouldn’t change hearts because we need to be “sophisticated” enough to understand the need for this “necessary” evil.

Just like the Nazis.

God help us all, in Jesus’ name.

THE promoter of the Holy Name

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I was doing a little reading on the Holy Name of Jesus — teachings about It, devotion to It, etc. — and discovered that, though many saints loved and promoted the Holy Name (St. Ignatius of Loyola is a notable example, having chosen the monogram of Jesus’ name — IHS — for the symbol of his Order, which he named after Jesus as well [the Jesuits]), there was one saint who rose head and shoulders above them all as the one most known for his devotion to and promotion of the Holy Name: St. Bernardine of Siena.

This might not have meant that much to me, except a little known fact about my alma mater (especially little known by those who didn’t attend, but even also by some [many?] alumni) is that, though its current name is Siena College, its original name was St. Bernardine of Siena College. (I can’t tell you how many people think it’s named for St. Catherine of Siena, even though it’s a Franciscan college and St. Catherine was a Dominican.)

St. Bernardine of Siena College, Loudonville, N. Y.
St. Bernardine of Siena College, Loudonville, N.Y. by Boston Public Library (2011) via Flickr, CC BY 2.0.

How cool to discover that my school’s patron was a superfan of the Holy Name??

So this isn’t really a name spotlight, because Bernardine is kind of … out of fashion? Even among Catholics who go bananas for heavy duty saint names. This is really more of a Holy Name of Jesus post, a note on one of the many awesome things I discovered about it. Which St. Bernardine, being a saint and a lover of the Name, would probably prefer — having Jesus be the focus. Like how St. John Paul the Great would put the crucifix in front of him, so when people looked at him they had to see Jesus first.

Luxembourg-5151 - Pope John Paul II
Luxembourg-5151-Pope John Paul II by Dennis Jarvis (2013) via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.

Says the Catholic Encyclopedia at New Advent:

“… the greatest promoters of this devotion were St. Bernardine of Siena and St. John Capistran. They carried with them on their missions in the turbulent cities of Italy a copy of the monogram of the Holy Name, surrounded by rays, painted on a wooden tablet, where with they blessed the sick and wrought great miracles. At the close of their sermons they exhibited this emblem to the faithful and asked them to prostrate themselves, to adore the Redeemer of mankind. They recommended their hearers to have the monogram of Jesus placed over the gates of their cities and above the doors of their dwelling (cf. Seeberger, “Key to the Spiritual Treasures”, 1897, 102). Because the manner in which St. Bernardine preached this devotion was new, he was accused by his enemies, and brought before the tribunal of Pope Martin V. But St. John Capistran defended his master so successfully that the pope not only permitted the worship of the Holy Name, but also assisted at a procession in which the holy monogram was carried. The tablet used by St. Bernardine is venerated at Santa Maria in Ara Coeli at Rome.”

I love too that St. Bernardine’s partner in crime good was St. John Capistran — one of the friars that I particularly loved during my time at Siena was a Fr. Capistran.

St. Alphonsus wrote about St. Bernardine and the Name of Jesus:

“If we read the life of St. Bernardine of Siena, we shall see how many sinners the Saint converted, how many abuses he put an end to, and how many cities he sanctified, by trying when he preached to induce the people to invoke the name of Jesus.”

So powerful! We could all use a little of that, right?? St. Bernardine, pray for us! Protect us from all evil, in Jesus’ Name.

IHS and St. Bernardine of Siena
IHS and St. Bernardine of Siena by John Donaghy (2013) via Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.