Holiness

Image Credit: Erin Jackson from 2023 Iona Pilgrimage

By Andrea Lingle

Hallowed be thy Name

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. John 1:1

God alone has the power to name himself.

The name of any being is an intermediary between the human spirit and that being.

[Humanity’s] only possibility of gaining access to [God] is through his hame. It is the Mediator…This name is holiness itself; there is no holiness outside it.

To ask for that which exists, that which exists really, infallibly, eternally, quite independently of our prayer, that is the perfect petition. Simone Weil, “Concerning the Our Father”

Holiness is an experienced phenomenon…Therefore, it is a very important cognitive “doorway” to understanding the nature of religion, for it is the most adequate basis we have for understanding the divine. The holy and the divine must be interpreted correlatively. A doctrine of God which does not include the category of holiness is not only unholy but also untrue. Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology, Vol 1 “God and the idea of the holy”

The smell of incense and wood, purely sung chant, the paten and chalice: suggestions of the holy. A clear blue sky threaded by birdsong, a stone smoothed by time, an eagle riding a thermal wave: hints of the holy. Unexpected laughter, a gentle embrace, the engulfment of grief: signatures of the holy. The tears of a clergy person humbled by the honor of enacting baptism. Here is a sign of holiness. A mushroom bursting through the crust of the earth. An irrepressible response to the fecundity of holiness. The shuffle of the footsore pilgrim. A byproduct of the lure of holiness.

Our Father, which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy Name.

The sentence structurally contains an address: Our Father, an adverbial clause: which art in heaven, and, finally, a sentence: Hallowed by thy name. Or in a sentence structure we are more familiar with: Your name be holy. Name be. That is the core of the sentence. Whose name? God’s. Be what? Holy. It is a petition to the Divine center to please, O please, be gravely important. Be imperative. O, blessed name of God, be unspeakable.

Please, oh dear Creator, exist as something beyond the heartbreaking reality of grind and struggle, and be that from which Creation proceeds.

Great Spirit of all Origination, be and be called that which forces us to attend to what cannot be comprehended.

The prayer of the Word of God begins with an injunction, a petition, a request, for God to be holy. Why? Could God not be holy? Could God be more holy if asked? From the beginning of this prayer, Jesus reveals that prayer is not about asking for things, for surely God is Holy or not God. Through the opening words of this prayer, Jesus reveals that prayer is the act of gazing and attending to what is. God does not need even Jesus’s petition to be holy. God is holy and holiness. The holy is the experienceable residue of God’s being.

That from which the nodding grasses, the gnarled hand, and the whirling galaxy budded, which contains but is not contained by our world, the very words we use to connect back to you are soaked with that which we do not understand.

Our Father, which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy Name.