CALLED BY NAME

JuLY 29, 2007

Have you ever heard your name called out? Most of us can still remember the voice of our mothers calling us in from play because dinner was ready. We can also remember what it sounded like to hear our names called when we were in trouble.

Our name is a very personal part of us. It let's the world know who we are, and keeps us from being lost in the crowd. To hear our name called or to see it in print is a sign of recognition. The world knows we're here. We're somebody.

On the other hand, if nobody around you knows your name, it indicates you don't have much of an identity in the group. You're nobody, or so it would seem.

Apparently, many people have trouble accepting their names at some point during their formative years. Some persons legally change their names for that exact reason, and many movie stars over the years have taken stage names they thought would give them better audience appeal.

Discomfort with one's name is a quiet sign of discomfort with oneself, and changing names is just one of the ways people have of trying to change who they are. The effort to improve on our identity also takes the form of fabricating stories about ourselves that put us in a better light and make others see us as winners rather than losers. Cosmetic surgery is another, more extreme expression of the human desire to be somehow more attractive, desirable, acceptable, admirable.

Why cannot some men accept hair loss? Why cannot some women accept wrinkles? Why does just about everyone want to conceal parts of themselves or their past out of shame?

Everyone wants and needs love. No one can live without it. Yet, everyone secretly fears that he is fundamentally unlovable, either because of some defect of character, or because of something done in the past, or because of a pattern of failures, or because he has never done anything strikingly brave, smart, beautiful, or otherwise notable.

The root of this human condition, as the Church knows, is the mystery of sin. The book of Genesis, describing the fall of Adam and Eve from grace in the original sin, states that after they disobeyed God by eating the forbidden fruit, "the eyes of both of them were opened and they realized that they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves. When they heard the sound of the Lord God moving about in the garden at the breezy time of the day, the man and his wife hid themselves... " (Gen 3:7 8).

This is the great paradox. We hide from the one who alone can heal us. We close ourselves off from the warmth of God's healing love so as not to have to expose ourselves to the light of his truth.

And what is the truth? That we have sinned? Yes, but there is a deeper truth, namely, that he has created each of us as he himself desired us to be: "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I dedicated you..." (Jer 1:5). Hasn't sin deformed us? Yes, but God says, "Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name: you are mine" (Isa 43:1).

Our situation is not one that is unknown to God, nor is it the case that God has difficulty accepting us. It is we who mysteriously fear God's love, and who find it difficult to accept ourselves.

It is said that most people lead lives of quiet desperation. If this is true, it is love and healing that we are desperate for. And what is the escape? A complete interior change, or conversion is what we need.

But isn't this the exact problem we feel powerless to doing anything about change what we are? Perhaps, but all conversion, all turning back to God, begins not so much with changing ourselves, but with a decision to change our relationship with God, by overcoming our fears and turning to him with our whole mind and heart and will and being. Perhaps this is so difficult because it is so easy. It is a matter of accepting God as he is: a personal God who knows us intimately, has compassion for us in our weakness and sinfulness, desires to draw us to himself, and calls each of us by name.

+Bishop Raymundo J. Peña

last updated 05-Jun-2008 9:48 sitemap