Good with Names (2022-11-02, All Souls Day)

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2022-11-02 – All Souls Day  Title:   . "Good with Names"

● Wisdom 3:1-9 ●   ● Psalm  23 ●     ● Romans 6:3-9  ●  + Luke 24:13-16, 28-35 ● ●  

Title: [__01__]    According to the sales, marketing and human behavior commentator, Dale Carnegie, the According to human behavior expert, “Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language.” If you want to show that you care whether it be a new friend you meet or a future boss that interviewed you, dropping their name mid-conversation will definitely send a spark of interest from you to that person.”

          Recently, I saw someone from a distance at a church I was visiting where I had been in many years, though not recently and I saw someone who looked very familiar, but I could not remember his name or even if we had ever been introduced. He just looked so familiar. It turned out he was an Archdiocese of Newark staff member who I had met – never in person – only on Zoom video conference calls – but I did recall his face.

[__02__]     On All Souls Day and every day, really, names are important because we are called to pray for our loved ones, for their eternal rest – by name – individually – personally.

          So our prayers for those in Purgatory are an expression of our trust in God’s mercy. In Purgatory, God is repairing our broken parts so we can live with Him forever. We must cooperate with Him in this work of love.

For it is a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead, that they may be loosed from sins. (2 Maccabees 12:46)

[__03__]      However, it’s also important to remember that the name we are focused on, calling it is also Jesus  Christ’s holy name by which we are saved. Amen !

          Taking my own name – as an example – it is not one that will save you.

          The name – James in English or Jacques in French/masculine or Jacqueline/feminine comes from the name Jacob, the Hebrew word or name, which means supplant, or to steal, to be a thief. Because Jacob in the book of Genesis tricked his brother Esau took his birthright. It's a scandalous and ironic history of the name. It is a bit of scandalous history then to be named Jacqueline, Jacques, Jacob, James, I still like my name.

          By the way, “JACOB” – in terms of popularity as a boy’s name - hit # 1 in 1999 and remained # 1 until 2013, and still is in the top 20.

          In the book of Genesis, we learned that Adam, God's first creation, the first man gave names to every living thing. And it is from the Bible that we learn that giving names to things or names to people helps us to know them to understand them to recognize them to relate to them.  And, then for God to bless each of us by  name.

[__04__]      By September, 1926, in southeastern Florida, the population of Dade County and the young city of Miami had blossomed to well over 100,000 (more than doubling in 5 years) and construction was everywhere.  People were optimistic, speculative, and woefully under-educated about storms and potential damage of wind and rain.

          In September 1926, the wind and rain began to fall and people did not know what to expect… equally as bad as Hurricane Ian and recently on the west coast of Florida.

 The storm and the wind and the rain and the flooding devastated the area and drove sent many people away from southeastern Florida, people who had come hoping to build up the city. This was known as the the Great Miami Hurricane of 1926.

About 2 years after this terrible storm, the U. of Miami opened to students in Coral Gables, near Miami. And as you may know, well, the mascot or nickname that the University of Miami chose for their teams is the hurricane, a bit of homage to the storm.

This is not the only example -- in the bay area of San Francisco, a seismic zone where the tectonic plates move, the the San Jose based professional soccer team = The Earthquakes. If you live in Miami, Florida, or in if you live in Miami, if you live in Florida, or if you live in the Bay area of San Francisco and California, you are called to respect the power of the hurricane and the power of an earthquake.

Nevertheless, neither you nor I nor the people of California or Florida, or need to be defeated by or completely ruled over by the power of a hurricane by the power of an earthquake or even by the power of death itself.

[__05__]      [The Gospel]. We've just read the road to Emmaus. There are two disciples trying to escape from what they perceive to be the disaster zone where the ground zero in Jerusalem right now temporarily they feel ruled over they feel defeated by death and dying. Their teacher, their rabbi, their leader is no longer with them.

It was a terrible storm. Right now they do remember his name, but they fear that Jesus's name will be forgotten. Perhaps his followers will also be arrested, charged, they are escaping trouble, not just mentally, but legally.

[__06__]      What should be our attitude toward death? Should we talk about it by name?

Many years ago, a dear friend of our family died, and his death shook me up, because it reminded me of my own mortality, and that of my parents. And I knew, for example, I knew my parents would one day die. But this forced me to confront when I was 29 years old to think, Well, my parents are going to die if their dear friend just died. You know, we all have finite lives on this earth.

The death of our friend touched my mother, father, my siblings and my cousins who lived nearby. We all knew the deceased – Jerry – very well.. Yet on the day of Jerry’s funeral, the my mother, my father, my aunt, and my uncle really taught me a lot about their example of what it meant to mourn, even to laugh after someone had died, to give thanks for his life.

Afterwards, my uncle said, as we were leaving the church on the day of the funeral, which had been very beautiful. My uncle said to me, that's how I want to be buried. That's how I want to be buried. I thought that was a weird statement at the age of 29. I couldn't take that in.

I thought that was so strange, so morbid. seem to say or think. But my uncle was somebody who was really preparing for his own death and dying by his prayer by his receiving of the sacraments. He was a beautiful example to me. We are here in church to remember to pray for our loved ones, to remember their names that their names live on, and that death does not have power over us.

We will read the names of our deceased shortly, to pray for them personally and also to pray that they will be blessed by the person of Christ whose name means “God saves”.  His name is the most important sound, in any language, to inform that his perpetual light shines upon us.

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