Homily: Thursday of the 5th Week of Lent 2016 - What's in a name

Throughout Scripture there are several accounts of God changing peoples’ names: Jacob’s name is changed to Israel, Simon’s name is changed to Peter, Saul’s name is changed to Paul. In our first reading today, God gives Abram the new name, Abraham, for he shall be the father of God’s great nation. In the biblical context a name-changing occurs when God gives a special mission to someone. Jesus change Simon’s name to Peter when he gave him the special mission of being the rock upon which Jesus would build his Church.

In baptism, our deepest identity is changed—we are renamed---we are given the name of ‘Christian’.  And just like Abraham, Peter, and Paul—that new name comes with a mission—spreading the Gospel and sharing in God’s divine life.

In Scripture, people get into trouble whenever they try to “make a name for themselves”. Remember, the tower of Babylon? The people sought to build a tower that touched the heavens to “make a name for themselves”…they didn’t do it to glorify God, they didn’t do it to house the poor, they didn’t do it to make God’s name great, they did it for themselves, for their own glory.

Today’s first reading takes place right after the story of the fall of the tower of Babylon—for that’s the destiny of all purely human endeavors—our towers fall inevitably. With the tower fallen, humanity in disarray, God chooses Abraham to be the father of a people whose vocation will be to make God’s name known throughout the earth.  Through their faithfulness to the commandments, through their intimate union with God—people will come to know God through them.

That promise to Abraham is fulfilled in the Christian Church, as we, the baptized, those raised to new life by Christ, have as our vocation spreading Christ’s name to every corner of the earth by our witness of holy living.

Yet, we have the same temptation don’t we: to make our lives all about ourselves, to live for ourselves instead of for him, to make ourselves the center of the universe instead of him.  Our Lenten penances have helped us to repent and convert from this terrible pride.  Our Lenten practices have been designed to help us decrease, so that his name may increase.  The amazing a paradoxical thing is, the more we become like him, the more we become the people God created us to be.  We do not lose our identity, rather, our identity, our names, are perfected.  When we submit every detail of our life over to God, we become the-best-version-of-yourself, as Matthew Kelly puts it.

Sadly, in many parts of our country, even our own town, St. Patrick, a man who lived for Christ, will be honored without any reference to Christ.  The man who was sold into slavery, who drove out false religion from the emerald isle, will be celebrated not with sober mindfulness, but with ignorant drunkenness. Many have remade Patrick to look like themselves, a life, with no reference to Christ.

Conscious of our need to decrease, to glorify Christ, let us continue in our Lenten practices, mindful of our vocation to make Christ’s name great, to spread his saving Gospel in a fallen world, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.