“The Name of Jesus” by Fr. Thomas for Texas Catholic.
Jesus is the pivot point of the Hail Mary prayer. In the original Latin text, the prayer consists of two parts, each containing 15 syllables. The first part contains the biblical witness of the Annunciation and Visitation; the second features the doctrinal affirmation of Mary as the Mother of God who prays for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.
The bridge connecting the Bible and the Church, then, is the name of Jesus. He is the center not simply of the prayer but, far more dramatically, of all time and space. We divide history into two basic periods: B.C. (“Before Christ”) and A.D. (“Anno Domini,” “In the Year of the Lord”). The politically correct formulations B.C.E. (Before Common Era) and C.E. (Common Era), invented to efface any overt reference to Jesus Christ, still acknowledge him implicitly as the fulcrum of human history.
The New Testament authors and patristic theologians immediately perceived the significance of the Incarnation. What came before Jesus was understood to be a preparation, a gradual unveiling of the divine plan for all humanity through Israel. Other nations, in their natural quests for wisdom, glimpsed faint shadows of the truth of God and the human soul; but all alike had to wait for the full revelation of God’s love when, in “the fullness of time, God sent his Son, born of a woman” (Gal. 4:4). Everything and everyone are thus oriented around the one who calls himself “the light of the world” (Jn 8:12); he takes ownership of the praise made in the psalm, “In you is the source of light, and in your light we see light” (Ps 36:10).
The Old Testament speaks constantly of the holiness of the divine name, and the Psalms are filled with praise of the one who revealed his unutterable name to Moses on Mount Sinai: “May the name of the LORD be blessed, both now and forever” (Ps 113:2). The first Christians prayed “in the name of the Lord Jesus” (Col 3:17), and they asserted that “there is no other name under heaven given to the human race by which we are to be saved” than the name of Jesus (Acts 4:12).
St. Paul likely quotes an early Christian hymn when he writes that, because of Jesus’ humble self-emptying unto death on a cross, God the Father “greatly exalted him and bestowed on him the name above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee shall bend, of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus is LORD, to the glory of God the Father” (Phil 2:8-11).
The structure of the Hail Mary prayer orients our lives in the same way that the lives of Mary and the Apostles were oriented: Everything hinges on the name of Jesus. Mary represents faithful Israel, the bride patiently awaiting the arrival of her long-delayed Beloved. When he finally comes in the fullness of time, she welcomes him eagerly with her “fiat” (Lk 1:26-38); and the rest of her life is spent, quietly but intently, in loving service of her Son. She ponders and carefully guards the mystery of his young years in her heart (Lk 2:19, 51), a mystery that includes the promise of much suffering: Simeon prophesies, when Jesus is only 40 days old, that a sword of sorrow will pierce her maternal heart (Lk 2:22-35). Mary’s experience of her son’s ministry is precisely the subject matter of our meditations on the mysteries of the rosary. Amid the joys, trials, and triumphs of his life, death, and resurrection, we perceive in her quiet faithfulness the model for our own Christian witness. We also take comfort in her maternal love, which, as the most perfect reflection possible of Christ’s love in a human being, never fails, both now in our hour of need and at the hour of our death.