December 18, 2016 - Fourth Sunday in Advent
When parents are expecting a child, one topic of discussion sooner or later will be: what name shall we give our child? How did you pick the names of your children: a name from a list on a website or from the bible or a name of a saint or a personality you admire? There are many ways of giving names. In some African cultures it could be the name of a grandfather, a name to remember an event when the child was born or a name to thank God for the gift of a child, like “God is creator” or ”God is the giver of life”. Mary and Joseph did not have that problem. They received the name of the child in Mary’s womb directly from God. In today’s Gospel, the angel tells Joseph two names: Jesus and Emmanuel, the name also mentioned in the first reading. This name Emmanuel defines who Jesus is: "God with us". The rest of the Gospel will spell out that in Jesus God has become visible to us. He teaches with the authority and heals with the power of God. And he will constantly remind his disciples that they have no reason to be afraid because “I am with you… till the end of time.” The name Emmanuel expresses his true identity. The name Jesus that is more familiar to us indicates his mission, the purpose for which he has come. Jesus means: “God saves.” He was sent by his father not to condemn the world, but to save it. John the Baptist was convinced the Messiah would come to save the “just” by destroying all sinners and establish a reign of justice. When Jesus acted differently and befriended sinners, he could not make any sense of it. Jesus remained faithful to his mission till the very end, when he prayed for his enemies and forgave the criminals crucified together with him. Perhaps the word “save” or “Saviour” sounds unfamiliar to many people today. We could rather say: Jesus came to liberate us, to set us free from sins, from sickness of soul, mind and body and finally from death. When, in the bible, God himself gives a name or changes a person’s name, it always indicates a new mission. We have not chosen our name. It was given to us by our parents. But if we had the possibility to give ourselves a name that indicates what our mission in life is, what we would like to be and to achieve, what name would you give yourself? That question is not easy to answer. Life is a long and sometimes painful process to discover who we truly are, what gifts God has put into us, and what is the task God has entrusted to us in the world. We never finish discovering something new in ourselves and in the people around us. Human beings remain always a mystery. But one day, we will understand fully who we truly are. St. Paul expresses it in his dense language when he writes in 1 Corinthians 13: “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.” Now we know ourselves only very superficially and vaguely. But the day of death when the limitations of our bodies and the limits of time and space fall away, we shall know God and through him ourselves fully, the way He knows everything about us now. Then He will give each one of us a new name that expresses fully who we truly are. “I will give him a white stone, with a new name written on the stone that no one knows except the one who receives it.” (Rev. 2:17)
Fr. Wolfgang Schonecke MAfr