Christmas is fast approaching, and today we hear the familiar story of St. Joseph torn over the unexpected revelation of Mary’s pregnancy. Yet an angel appears in a dream, assuring him that all is well, all this is of God, and he ought not fear to take Mary into his home as his wife, raising her Son as his own. He is promised the privilege of naming the child; this was the privilege of any Jewish father, and as we learn from Adam in Genesis (2:19-20) to name something was to possess it. Hence Moses does not call the Being he encounters in the burning bush some name that comes to his mind, but asks the Being for its name, and receives it. The People of God would come to revere that name as being so holy that they would not say it or even write it, substituting words like “Lord” and “God” in its place.
Yet a human man, righteous though he was, gets to name God, a name which means “God is salvation.” Not only is the prophecy fulfilled—that He shall be Emmanuel, meaning “God is with us”—but it is deepened: God, through His Son, is not merely in our midst as one of us, but He belongs to us. “For a child is born to us,” Isaiah says, “a son is given to us,” (9:5). Adam had the privilege of naming each animal and thus had dominion over them; Joseph had the greater privilege of naming the Son of God, becoming truly His father in His humanity, that we might call upon that same name, the name of the One the Father has given us as the greatest gift He could possibly offer, the greatest sign of His love for us.
Jesus.