Epiphany, Second Sunday, or Most Holy Name (Your Mileage May Vary)
Happy Tenth Day of Christmas! Today is… complicated. Depending on what calendar you happen to be using, today might very well be the great Solemnity of the Epiphany. Or not.
Traditionally, though, the Epiphany is celebrated on January 6 – the the day after the Twelfth Day of Christmas. Since the calendar reforms of 1970, any diocese may choose to move the celebration to the Sunday following January 11. Indeed, this is what my own archdiocese of Seattle does, so happy Epiphany!
I’ll make a fuller post on the Epiphany on the sixth, when we’ll be heading over to Saint Joseph parish for the Epiphany High Mass.
In many other places in the United States and around the world today is simply the Second Sunday after Christmas. This is what it is in my Benedictine Ordo, so this morning I prayed Lauds of that Sunday. If this is true where you live, merry Christmas!
Of course, this evening we plan on attending Mass our local parish of Saint Patrick, where it will be the Epiphany. Whee!
And then, in the calendar used by the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite, today we celebrate the Memorial of the Most Holy Name of Jesus.
Therefore God has 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, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
As Saint Paul attests, devotion to the Lord’s Name goes right back to Apostolic times. The feast, however, is of much more recent origin, dating to the fifteenth century.
The devotion was popularized by Saint Bernardine of Siena, who often used the letters “IHS”, the first three letters of “Jesus” in Greek. This “Christogram” proved popular, because in Latin it can also be taken as the initials of the phrase “Jesus Hominum Salvator”, (“Jesus, Saviour of men”)2.
And why honour the Holy Name?
Names are a powerful thing, indeed. In faerie tales and myths, if you know somebody’s “true name”, you have power over them. You can call on them at need.
When God told His name to Moses (Exodus 3:13-17), it was carefully recorded when the Torah was written. But to this day, anyone who is reading aloud in synagogue, when the come to this name, instead say “Adonai”, which simply means “Lord”.
God’s name was too sacred to be spoken.
But when the Second Person of the Divine Trinity is conceived, it is God Himself who names Him. When God becomes man, becomes relatable, He somehow becomes more reachable as well. The Angel of the Annunciation says to the Blessed Virgin Mary:
“Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus.”
Here is a name that God gives Himself, and it is the name we are to call Him, and call upon Him with. At need.
There is an ancient custom to bow one’s head whenever the Holy Name is mentioned. You will see priests and altar servers alike bow their heads during Mass whenever they hear the name of Jesus.
Try it. It will make you more acutely aware of the Lord as you focus on hearing the Holy Name.
If this is the feast you are celebrating today, I wish all the joy of the feast!
- Technically “The Epiphany of the Lord is celebrated on 6 January, unless, where it is not observed as a holy day of obligation, it has been assigned to the Sunday occurring between 2 and 8 January.” (Universal Norms on the Liturgical Year and the Calendar, no. 37)
- It can also be used for “In hoc signo” (“in this sign”), which relates to the dream of the victorious Emperor Constantine, the man who legalized Christianity in the Roman Empire).