Feast of the Most Holy Name of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Today is the Feast of the Most Holy Name of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Although it's an obscure feast it dates back to at least 1684.

Interestingly, it was removed from the liturgical calendar after Vatican II, but re-introduced by my guy, St. John Paul II-- along with the Feast of the Holy Name of Jesus.

I find the "name" feasts very interesting, along with the Feast of the Holy Face of Jesus (which occurs on Shrove Tuesday). I like how anti-rationalistic they are, although that's a negative way to put it. Maybe I could better say they are particularistic.

I do believe that the name of Jesus has a special power. I don't know how to elaborate on that theologically, but it seems an observable fact that just invoking the name of Jesus changes the atmosphere in a room. Of course, that could be explained non-supernaturally. Supernatural or non-supernatural, I'm all for it.

I personally prefer to use the name "Jesus" than "Our Lord", for this very reason. And don't get me started on "BVM", a usage I can't stand, even if it's been used by saints and bishops (as it might well have been, for all I know). I also dislike the abbreviation of Mary Immaculate College in Limerick to "Mary I." (Every year I fight back against "Paddy's Day", despite being a defender of "paddywhackery" more generally.)

I struggle with Marian devotion. It's never come naturally to me. But I keep praying to be cured of this.

Back when I was an agnostic, I wrote a poem about the name of Jesus, though I took it from a rather negative perspective. I wrote this in 2005:

Jesus

Even the name is difficult to say,
Except as a curse.
Now even the dying hardly think to pray
And even prayers get by without the name
Since we found all gods to be more or less the same.
But the echo of that sound won’t go away–
The roll of the tombstone filled the universe.
And the words that the Bible-printers put in red
Live on in daily breath, carelessly spoken.
Some try, like a girl whose heart's been broken
To speak that name in an even voice.
But all our sleepless nights down centuries,
The weight of Tartarus and Paradise,
Won’t vanish. Something sturdier than faith
Lurks under all our jokes, our ironies.
And the atheist and the old man on his knees
Still share a world watched over by a wraith.