ON THE HOLY NAME

I am delighted, perhaps unusually for me, to read belatedly that the Holy Father proscribed three years ago the speaking or singing in the Church's Liturgy of the Holy Name YHWH.

Aware that the Name by Which God identified Himself to Israel is Holy, numinous, not to be spoken lightly if at all, I was never happy with Its use, either in Biblical translation, nor in the gimcrack 'praise songs' in which happy-clappy Catholics so greatly rejoice. 

We know, of course, that Jesus referred to his Father as 'Abba'. This may have approximated to 'Daddy', but I think not, and would suggest that the sense conveyed was slightly closer to 'Papa', or some word appropriate to a Father and Patriarch.

Fathers today are nothing. The cultural content conveyed by 'Abba" has been demolished over the last 100 or so years, and we are left with Happy Pappy, into Whose lap we can crawl and ask for sweets, money, a cuddle, a doll, or a train set.

I think not.

The Father Whom we worship and sometimes try to obey, ordained the Four Last Things: death, Judgment, Heaven, and Hell. He is not a cuddly old man going soft at the edges.

In the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. I am very afraid.