The name was given before the child was conceived. The angel told Joseph to call him Jesus, which means God saves, for he would save his people from their sins, and the name was bestowed on the eighth day according to the Law. The Acts of the Apostles insists there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved, and Saint Paul's hymn to the Philippians proclaims that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend in heaven, on earth, and under the earth. Devotion to the Holy Name flourished in the later Middle Ages, above all through the preaching of Saint Bernardine of Siena and his Franciscan brethren, who displayed the monogram IHS, drawn from the first letters of the name in Greek. A feast of the Holy Name was granted to the Franciscans in the early sixteenth century and extended to the universal Church by Pope Innocent XIII in 1721. It was removed from the general calendar in the revision of 1969, when its content was seen as already present in the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God on January 1, and was restored as an optional memorial on January 3 in the third edition of the Roman Missal published in 2002. Because it is an optional memorial within the Christmas Season, it may be celebrated or the weekday of Christmastide kept instead. White vestments are worn and the Missal provides proper prayers. Related customs include the Litany of the Holy Name, the practice of bowing the head at the name of Jesus, and the reverence for the name enjoined by the second commandment, which the Catechism treats as an obligation of praise rather than merely a prohibition of blasphemy.

Optional memorial

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Christmas

January 3

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