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Dearly beloved, we are gathered
The Mass is the chance to hear our true names spoken
Nov. 06, 2009
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PDF version“What name do you give your child?” This is the first question of the baptismal rite. Before we ask about faith, before we speak of the duties of parents and godparents, we ask for the child’s name. No one goes into the waters of baptism anonymously. No strangers enter the font. No aliens are anointed with sweet-smelling oil and robed in white garments. The child who is baptized has a name.
She has the name her parents have chosen, a name that links her to a tradition and to those who have gone before her in faith. And she has the names the church bestows upon her: Welcomed with Great Joy, Bathed in Light, Faithful Follower, Temple of God’s Glory, Life in Abundance, Forever a Member of Christ, New Creation, Child of God.
A lifetime of raising children and working with children has tuned my ear to the names they are sometimes given at school and on the street, and at home. Everyone has heard them: Stupid and Fat and Bitch and Fag. There are Sundays when I think the best reason to gather for Mass is the chance to hear, once again, our true names spoken. Like the chrism of salvation poured out upon us on the day of our baptisms, the sound of the names the church has given is a balm. Not Poor, but Dearly Beloved; not Illegal, but Gift. We are the ones of whom the eucharistic prayer says: “From age to age you gather a people to yourself, so that from east to west a perfect offering may be made to the glory of your name.”
We, and not someone smarter or richer, but we, we are the people God gathers.
I’ve been haunted by those words, “What name do you give this child?” ever since the news broke in late 2007 of a young man shooting people in an Omaha, Neb., mall. He left a note before he went to the mall and began firing. It read: “Now, I’ll be famous.” At last, he would have a name.
I cannot help but wonder how this story might have ended had he known his true name, some name other than “Killer,” the one by which we all now know him.
The first detail the angel gives Mary about her son is his name, Jesus. Zechariah’s mouth is opened and speech restored him once he knows and bestows his son’s name, John. There is nothing generic here, “special child” or “gifted one.” They have names.
What does it mean to carry the name of a grandparent or a martyr? How does one bear the weight of such a name? How can one hope to occupy the landscape of a hallowed name? What does it mean to bear a name from ancestral lands, a name in an ancestral language? What about an unlikely American president whose unlikely middle name is Hussein?
What does it mean to come to Mass each Sunday and be called “brothers and sisters” and “dear friends in Christ”? How can we stand as brothers and sisters to people we have never met? How can we live as “dear friends in Christ” with those we dislike or fear?
Would it make any difference if, on the day of our baptism, we had been referred to as simply “the child”?
Not long after the shootings in Omaha, a young man opened fire at a church in my town. He killed two young girls, sisters. The debate here now involves policemen and armed security guards at churches. “We need protection,” many say. “We need guns in case another killer targets a church.”
And I wonder, what if, instead, we all knew our true names.
Melissa Musick Nussbaum lives in Colorado Springs, Colo. Her e-mail is mmnussbaum@comcast.net. This is an edited version of a column that first appeared in Celebration, NCR’s worship resource.
I really like this article.
I really like this article. I wish the church would give up special names for baptism (and maybe they have, it's been a while since I attended one). Why isn't the name our parents give us enough? Why a new name for baptism and a new one for Confirmation? The church keeps telling us we aren't good enough the way God made us and our parents named us. Yes, let us know our names both in church and outside of it.
The parents DO give their
The parents DO give their children their baptismal names.
The children choose their confirmation names.
And what if, when we came to
And what if, when we came to receive the Sacred Bread and the Blood of Christ, we were to hear our given names: "John, the Body of Christ," "Mary, the Blood of Christ" - isn't this what Ms Nussbaum is implying, when she says, in the title of this article, that the Mass is the chance to hear our true names spoken? Then, we would be true to the Scripture that says the Good Shepherd knows his sheep & calls them by name!
http://findarticles.com/p/art
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1141/is_n8_v31/ai_16025843/?tag=c...
What follows is from a 15-year-old article by Patricia Lefevere from NCR about how names given in the sacrament of baptism are altered, falsified, lost, forgotten, when an "illegitimate" child is adopted:
"Fr. Thomas Brosnan adamantly disagrees. So adamantly that he told New Jersey state senators that a person's right to his or her name and identity weighs 'far more than the right of a woman to privacy from her own child.' Brosnan, an adoptee who did not learn who his real mother was until age 31, testified that it was standard practice for dioceses to alter data on the baptismal certificates of adoptees.
"Such alteration includes certificates that attest that the adoptee was born to his adoptive parents. Often two certificates with two different dates are issued, Brosnan testified. Dual certificates lead people to believe they were baptized twice, he said, a practice the church forbids.
"By far the most serious falsification of such documents occurs when church authorities alter the child's baptismal name when that same child is adopted. Brosnan charged that such changes undermine 'the very essence of the meaning of baptism, which is the naming of the human person before God.'
"The priest, who coordinates the Korean apostolate for the Brooklyn diocese and administers a Korean parish in Brooklyn, warned of the lie that can be initiated by the closing of birth records. 'The lie told to avoid the shame of unwanted pregnancy becomes the lie of many adoptive parents so desperate to forget the pain of infertility, becomes the lie preserved in the falsified documents ostensibly manufactured to protect the child from the stigma of illegitimacy, he said.
"Referring to his own illegitimacy, which required that he get a dispensation before being ordained, the priest said, 'To deny me my inalienable right to know my name is to deny me my unique identity. I would rather be the bastard who knows his name, than the slave who does not.'"
This is very good! Thank
This is very good! Thank you, Melissa.
Does this article have a
Does this article have a point?
We go to Mass every Sunday
We go to Mass every Sunday and for 11 years nobody asks us our names. I go to a non-denominational Prostestant Church and a family like mine greets and welcomes us, not a solo greeter but a family. We felt welcomed. Isn't that the significance of Baptism?
What a great article. I think
What a great article. I think we all need to be reminded that we are called by name by God and we by name all belong to the communion of saints. I've been focusing on 'for whom were you named' with the children in the RE Program I supervise. Not just the saint's name or feast day- but why did you receive the name you were given...were you named for a beloved aunt, a much loved grandparent, a famous movie star, a beautiful event...it's been a wonderful exploration with the children who have been asking their parents this question. I explain to the children that my Grandmother chose my name, because although I was a girl, she loved the Archangel Michael as the defender of heaven. Thank you, Melissa.
Beautiful, beautiful,
Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful!!
thank you!
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