Word to the Wise
Thursday, July 16, 2009 - TThursday in the Fifteenth Week in Ordinary Time
[Exodus 3:13-20 and Matthew 11:28-30]"When I go to the children of Israel and say to them, 'The God of your fathers has sent me to you,' if they ask me, ''What is his name?' what am I to tell them?" God replied, "I am who am." Then he added,"This is what you shall tell the children of Israel: I AM sent me to you."
"What's in a name.....?" asks the famous question from Shakespeare's ROMEO AND JULIET. Well, there can be a lot! This moment in the Bible is THE moment of revelation of God's identity. For Hebrews, the name was equivalent to the person, and not simply a label! So, the actual name of God was never to be pronounced except by the High Priest once a year in the "holy of holies" place at the temple. The result is that the true pronunciation of the word (printed only with consonants in Hebrew) was literally forgotten over time and after the destruction of the temple. However, anything that came close to it would provoke a reaction. In the Gospel of John, Jesus consistently uses the words, I AM, and this provoked stone throwing reactions. Of course, he was simply telling the bald truth! The Bible uses any number of names for God: Adonai, Shaddai, Elohim - to avoid saying the actual name of God. It's almost like that "You know who.." phrase in the Harry Potter books. We Westerners are perhaps a bit too casual in that regard and we pay for it in the loss of any notion of sacredness. The enormity of knowing God by knowing God's name escapes us. We forget that by giving a name to a newborn child, we impact that child for life! What's in a name? Everything! AMEN
config
view
logs
3840.0 KB
81 ms
4
