The Most Holy Name of Jesus

Eight days after his birth, the child was circumcised and given the name the angel had spoken before his conception: Jesus — Yeshua in Hebrew, meaning "God saves." The name is not a label but a mission statement. In Jewish tradition, to name a child is to declare what God will do through that life, and this name carries the entire Gospel in a single word.

Devotion to the Holy Name grew through the preaching of St. Bernardine of Siena in the fifteenth century, who carried a tablet emblazoned with the monogram IHS — the first three letters of Jesus in Greek — and held it before crowds as an object of veneration. The practice spread across Europe, and the Jesuits later adopted the monogram as their own emblem, inscribing it on churches, schools, and missions around the world.

The memorial, celebrated on January 3, invites the faithful to pause over the most frequently spoken word in Christian prayer. Paul wrote to the Philippians that "at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth." It is the name spoken at baptism, whispered at deathbeds, and repeated in the Jesus Prayer of the Eastern tradition — a name meant not just to be said but to be inhabited.