Praying With The Holy Name

I will be forever grateful for my Jesuit graduate school professor, Father William Walsh, and the many "take-homes" of his Spiritual Theology course five-plus decades ago. "Why tune the violin after the concert?" he'd say. "I promise you that if you give God consistent time every morning to begin your day your will see fruit that will astound you." "Your prayer time may seem dry and unproductive, but you are priming the pump for God's 'percolation' within you. Worlds will open." "Watch for the "not I but Christ in me' to unfold." "You are in for the adventure of a lifetime--you will never be bored. God lives within you!" Father Walsh, you were spot on.

St. Paul, in his letter to the Thessalonians (5:17) urges us to "pray unceasingly." How relieving that this is not an "it's-all-up-to-me" operation--something that I must choose consciously and continuously to do, but rather a "sinking down" into a dialogue already in progress deep in my spirit. Yes, my free will must be engaged in picking up that violin of Father Walsh's, but what beauty already inherent in the instrument!  

St. Paul assures the Romans (8:26, 27)) that "the Spirit too helps us in our weakness, for we do not know how to pray as we ought; but the Spirit himself makes intercession for us with groanings that cannot be expressed in speech. He who searches hearts knows what the Spirit means, for the Spirit intercedes for the saints as God himself wills." The Holy Spirit, one with us at a cellular level, knows us from the inside out in the movements of our hearts and nuances of our thoughts--with the weight these bear in our bodies--and "groans" them to the Searcher of Hearts, the Father, as He himself has ordained. We learn in the Book of Hebrews (7:26) that Jesus "lives to make intercession for us." Thus, our depths are caught up into communion with the Trinity, hell-bent (heaven-bent!) on being one with us, descending to us so that we can ascend to the triune God. The self-deprecation that can besiege us in an instant, the indecision that can overwhelm us in the grocery store, let alone all our meatier body/soul stress--all that constitutes our "I am" lives in dialogue with the "I AM."

"I living in you, you, living in Me (Jn.15:4).,, We don't have to understand, or manage, this slip-stream of heart speaking to heart, any more than we have to understand or manage our blood circulating or our breakfast being digested or oxygen filling our lungs. The Life-giver dwells within! Yet there are moments when the interior "percolation" surfaces. How astounding, for instance, to be suddenly aware of my lips forming, utterly unbidden by my conscious brain, the name "Jesus." JESUS. Jesus. Jesus. His beautiful Name pours out of me. Out of nowhere it has come, but so real. It is as though my deepest interior--all the yearnings, all the "incompletes," all the real tastes of hell and real tastes of heaven, all my pleas for my beloveds, all the what-am-I-having-for-supper-tonight(s) and who's-coming-over(s) coalesce in that Name.  And there they mingle with glory--the taste of my last Eucharist still lingering, the Communion of Saints in my viscera, Mary my Mother with her perpetual grace-whispers preparing me for my Wedding. His Name holds it all, enfolds it all, integrates it all.

From the inside out I have stumbled into the "Way of the Name." Father Walsh introduced his students to the Eastern "Jesus Prayer"--"Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, have mercy on me, a sinner," (promulgated, too, by Western saints such as Bernard of Clairvaux and John Cassian). He bade us repeat and repeat it, live into it from the outside in, so to speak.  Fifty years later it has fused into a one diamond of a Word singing, sometimes constantly, from the inside out. Orthodox priest Father Lev Gillett, in his beautiful treatise, On the Invocation of the Name, affirms, "The Name is the symbol and bearer of the Person of Christ. Otherwise, the invocation of the Name would be mere verbal idolatry...the presence of Jesus is the real content and the substance of the Holy Name."

Thank you, dear IHM Sisters, for insisting that we grade schoolers bow our heads at the "Holy Name"--such fear redeemed! I think of the old form of weddings vows: "With my body, I thee worship." What a huge grace, the habit of bowing before, as Fr. Gillett says, "the Name (which) both signifies Jesus' presence and brings its reality." And its reality?  All that Jesus is, espoused to all we are. Our interiors are inseparable--"I living in you, you living in Me" (Jn.15:4). Father Gillet continues, "He is more than the giver of what we and others need. He is also the gift...if I hunger He is my food. If I am ill He is my health. If I am persecuted, He is my deliverance. If I am impure He becomes my purity." I could add, "if I am unsettled, He is my serenity. If I am scattered, He is my focus. If I doubt, then He is my trust.   If I..., then He..., to the infinity of my need and of His sufficiency.

Through Him, with Him, in Him,,,  "Come now my love, my lovely one, come," is the invitation.  Sink down into the 'Let-Me- do-it' (Jesus' words to St. Margaret Mary) continually at work within you.  Let my Name be our shortcut. I know what you mean by it. You know what you mean by it.  Just say the Name!  It's the prayer of all prayers. It carries all I am joined to all you are. My Mother will help you. No one's violin was more in tune than hers. How she loved to say my Name. It resonated to her core where the Holy Spirit percolated unimpeded, and sang back to Heaven from her depths, carrying all humanity with it. Carrying you with it. She and the Holy Spirit will do the percolating within you.  Just say my Name.

Bonnie West, Copyright 2025