The Power of the Name

Kallis­tos (Ware) Bishop of Diok­leia

"The Name of the Son of God is great and bound­less, and up­holds the en­tire uni­verse". So it is af­firmed in The Shep­herd of Her­mas, nor shall we ap­pre­ci­ate the role of the Jesus Prayer in Or­tho­dox spir­i­tu­al­ity un­less we feel some sense of the power and virtue of the di­vine Name. If the Jesus Prayer is more cre­ative than other in­vo­ca­tions, this is be­cause it con­tains the Name of God.

In the Old Tes­ta­ment, as in other an­cient cul­tures, there is a close con­nec­tion be­tween some­one’s soul and his name. His per­son­al­ity, with its pe­cu­liar­i­ties and its en­ergy, is in some sense pre­sent in his name. To know a per­son’s name is to gain an in­sight into is na­ture, an thereby to ac­quire a re­la­tion­ship with him - even, per­haps, a cer­tain con­trol over him. That is why the mys­te­ri­ous mes­sen­ger who wres­tles with Jacob at the ford Jab­bok re­fuses to dis­close his name (Быт. 32:29). The same at­ti­tude is re­flected in the reply of the angel to Manoah, "Why ask­est thou thus after my name, see­ing it is se­cret?" (Суд. 13:18). A change of name in­di­cates a de­ci­sive change in a per­son’s life, as when Abram be­comes Abra­ham (Быт. 17:5), or Jacob comes Is­rael (Быт. 32:28). In the same way, Saul after his con­ver­sion be­comes Paul (Деян. 13:9); and a monk at his pro­fes­sion is given a new name, usu­ally not of his own choos­ing, to in­di­cate the rad­i­cal re­newal which he un­der­goes.

In the He­brew tra­di­tion, to do a thing in the name of an­other, or to in­voke and call upon his name, are acts of weight and po­tency. To in­voke a per­son’s name is to make that per­son ef­fec­tively pre­sent. "One makes a name alive by men­tion­ing it. The name im­me­di­ately calls forth the soul it des­ig­nates; there­fore there is such deep sig­nif­i­cance in the very men­tion of a name".

Every­thing that is true of human names is true to an in­com­pa­ra­bly higher de­gree of the di­vine Name. The power and glory of God are pre­sent and ac­tive in his Name. The Name of God is numen prae­sens, God with us, Em­manuel. At­ten­tively and de­lib­er­ately to in­voke God’s Name is to place one­self in his pres­ence, to open one­self to his en­ergy, to offer one­self as an in­stru­ment and a liv­ing sac­ri­fice in his hands. So keen was the sense of the majesty of the di­vine Name in later Ju­daism that the tetra­gram­ma­ton was not pro­nounced aloud in the wor­ship of the syn­a­gogue: the Name of the Most High was con­sid­ered too dev­as­tat­ing to be spo­ken.

This He­braic un­der­stand­ing of the Name passes from the Old Tes­ta­ment into the New. Dev­ils are cast out and men are healed through the Name of Jesus, for the Name is power. Once this po­tency of the Name is prop­erly ap­pre­ci­ated, many fa­mil­iar pas­sages ac­quire a fuller mean­ing and force: the clause in the Lord’s Prayer, "Hal­lowed be thy Name"; Christ’s promise at the Last Sup­per, "What­ever you shall ask the Fa­ther in my Name, he will give it you" (Ин. 16:23); his final com­mand to the apos­tles, "Go there­fore, and teach all na­tions, bap­tiz­ing them in the Name of the Fa­ther, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit" (Мф. 28:19); St. Peter’s procla­ma­tion that there is sal­va­tion only in "the Name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth" (Деян. 4:10-12); the words of St. Paul, "At the Name of Jesus every knee should bow" (Флп. 2:10); the new and se­cret name writ­ten on the white stone which is given to us in the Age to Come (Отк. 2:17).

It is this bib­li­cal rev­er­ence for the Name that forms the basis and foun­da­tion of the Jesus Prayer. God’s Name is in­ti­mately linked with his Per­son, and so the In­vo­ca­tion of the di­vine Name pos­sesses a sacra­men­tal char­ac­ter, serv­ing as an ef­fi­ca­cious sign of his in­vis­i­ble pres­ence and ac­tion. For the be­liev­ing Chris­t­ian today, as in apos­tolic times, the Name of Jesus is power. In the words of the two El­ders of Gaza, St. Barsanuphius and St. John (sixth cen­tury), "The re­mem­brance of the Name of God ut­terly de­stroys all that is evil". "Flog your en­e­mies with the Name of Jesus", urges St. John Cli­ma­cus, "for there is no weapon more pow­er­ful in heaven or on earth. ...Let the re­mem­brance of Jesus be united to your every breath, and then you will know the value of still­ness".

The Name is power, but a purely me­chan­i­cal rep­e­ti­tion will by it­self achieve noth­ing. The Jesus Prayer is not a magic tal­is­man. As in all sacra­men­tal op­er­a­tions, the human per­son is re­quired to co-op­er­ate with God through ac­tive faith and as­cetic ef­fort. We are called to in­voke the Name with rec­ol­lec­tion and in­ward vig­i­lance, con­fin­ing our minds within the words of the Prayer, con­scious who it is that we are ad­dress­ing and that re­sponds to us in our heart. Such stren­u­ous prayer is never easy in the ini­tial stages, and is rightly de­scribed by the Fa­thers as a hid­den mar­tyr­dom. St. Gre­gory of Sinai speaks re­peat­edly of the "con­straint and labour" un­der­taken by those who fol­low the Way of the Name; a "con­tin­ual ef­fort" is needed; they will be tempted to give up "be­cause of the in­sis­tent pain that comes from the in­ward in­vo­ca­tion of the in­tel­lect". "Your shoul­ders will ache and you will often feel pain in your head", he warns, "but per­se­vere per­sis­tently and with ar­dent long­ing, seek­ing the Lord in your heart". Only through such pa­tient faith­ful­ness shall we dis­cover the true power of the Name.

This faith­ful per­se­ver­ance takes the form, above all, of at­ten­tive and fre­quent rep­e­ti­tion. Christ told his dis­ci­ples not to use "vain rep­e­ti­tions" (Мф. 6:7); but the rep­e­ti­tion of the Jesus Prayer, when per­formed with in­ward sin­cer­ity and con­cen­tra­tion, is most em­phat­i­cally not "vain". The act of re­peat­edly in­vok­ing the Name has a dou­ble ef­fect: it makes our prayer more uni­fied and at the same time more in­ward.