A name with a mission

Saturday, January 4, 2020

First Reading: 1 Jn 3:7-10

Gospel Reading: John 1:35-42
John was standing in Bethabara beyond the Jordan with two of his disciples. As Jesus walked by, John looked at him and said, “There is the Lamb of God.” On hearing this, the two disciples followed Jesus. He turned and saw them following, and he said to them, “What are you looking for?” They answered, “Rabbi (which means Master), where are you staying?” Jesus said, “Come and see.” So they went and saw where he stayed and spent the rest of that day with him. It was about four o’clock in the afternoon.
Andrew, the brother of Simon Peter, was one of the two who heard what John had said and followed Jesus. Early the next morning he found his brother Simon and said to him, “We have found the Messiah” (which means the Christ), and he brought Simon to Jesus. Jesus looked at him and said, “You are Simon, son of John, but you shall be called Cephas” (which means Rock).
D@iGITAL-EXPERIENCE
(Daily Gospel in the Assimilated Life Experience)
The late Chiara Lubich, founder of the Focolare movement was fond of giving spiritual names to her adherents. Her official visit to the Philippines happened during my yearlong stay at the Focolare Center in Tagaytay City. I was among those given a spiritual name. Mine was “Dio nell’Anima” (God in the soul). The acronym still forms my religious name “Dan”. From then on the mention of my name became a reminder of the God in me I am supposed to radiate.
Jesus too had the habit of changing names. He changed the name of Simon to Cephas (Peter). According to a commentary by St. John Chrysostom, Jesus’ practice of changing names takes us back to the time when God would name a person in accordance with a given mission. Accordingly he renamed Abram “Abraham”, Sarai “Sarah,” and Jacob “Israel,” (Gn 17,5ff.; 32,29).
While Jesus never had the chance to change our names, we all got our names at our spiritual rebirth at baptism. But society has squandered the opportunity to commission us spiritually by failing to give us names that define our mission. A mother insisted at baptism to name her child armalite in memory of her husband who died as a soldier fighting in Mindanao. Thinking that the mother wasn’t serious, the priest quipped: “Let’s make it baby armalite; he’s still a baby anyway.”
Funnier still is the practice of combining the names of parents such as Bulyong and Lusita who named their baby “Bulsita”. The more ambitious parents borrow American names that are so incompatible with the looks of their babies. Take it from Chiara Lubich: there is more to names than meets the eye. Let’s choose those names that define our God-given mission. –(Atty.) Rev. Fr. Dan Domingo P. delos Angeles, Jr., J.D., D.M.