Day 8. What is Your Name?
Vocation Discernment Preliminary Novena
“Am I Ready for Discernment?”
The same night [Jacob] got up and took his two wives, his two maids, and his eleven children, and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. He took them and sent them across the stream, and likewise everything that he had. Jacob was left alone; and a man wrestled with him until daybreak. When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he struck him on the hip socket; and Jacob’s hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him. Then he said, “Let me go, for the day is breaking.” But Jacob said, “I will not let you go, unless you bless me.” So he said to him, “What is your name?” And he said, “Jacob.” Then the man said, “You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with humans, and have prevailed.” Then Jacob asked him, “Please tell me your name.” But he said, “Why is it that you ask my name?” And there he blessed him. So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying,“For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved.”
Genesis 32:22-30 NRSVCE
Eleven... okay. Um, well my name’s Mike, short for Michael. How about we call you ‘El’, short for Eleven?
Mike Wheeler, Stranger Things
For me the greatest fear in seeking God’s will was always that I would lose myself in the process. I knew the words of Jesus: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will save it.” (Lk. 9:23-24 NRSVCE). I wondered, “Does this mean that I lose me? Does following Jesus mean that God re-wires my personality? Does it mean that my likes and dislikes simply don’t matter anymore?”
From his struggle with the angel, Jacob receives a new name. In scripture, there is great significance in a name change. It indicates a new direction for one’s life: a new orientation, a new mission, a new vision. At God’s call Abram became Abraham; his wife Sarai became Sarah. Simon became Peter and Saul, Paul. For the purpose of our reflection, the change of a name can also be understood as a particular vocation from God. (That’s why religious orders have traditionally given a new name to those who make vows).
So there is more to a name than mere labeling. Despite Shakespeare’s famous line that a rose by any other name would smell just as sweet, names have great meaning. They say something fundamental about our identity. A change in a name is not “rearranging the furniture” but rather “re-pouring the foundations.” It is not “changing the wrapping” but rather, “altering the contents of the package.” So we are right, I think, to ask whether we will come out of this with our “self” intact.
Whilst I’m ruminating, other interesting things about names: Names are particular. They indicate a particular person: This one, not that one. Though you might have the same name (Jennifer, Jason, Johan, etc.) as someone else, your name is still uniquely yours. It identifies you in the mind of everyone who uses it. You are known by your name and your name is known to others through you.
Names are also relational. A name is the front door, so to speak, of any relationship you start. Pope Benedict XVI explains: “the name creates the possibility of address or invocation. It establishes relationship” [1]. Knowing your name is the first step toward knowing you. We can’t really say we know each other until we’ve been introduced and at the heart of an introduction is the exchange of names. It’s a ritual as old as civilization itself.
One uniquely scriptural aspect of names is that they hold a certain power over the person named. The Catechism explains, “To disclose one’s name…is to hand oneself over by becoming accessible” [2]. So if I know your name, I have the power to invoke, that is, to call upon, your name. It’s a summoning power, a power that calls forth a response. That explains the angel’s unwillingness to identify himself. He chooses to remain unnamed because as a messenger of God, he is mysterious and beyond human powers of understanding.
All this is to hammer home the point that a change of name goes deep. And we should expect it to affect us deeply. In scripture, the new name describes the new vocation. “Abraham” means “father of many nations.” “Peter” as you know, means “rock” as in, “on this rock, I (Jesus) will build my church.” (Mt. 16:18) So our vocation is more than a career or even a mission. It is a change in identity and a corresponding change in role before God.
Returning to the primary question, will you escape this whole discernment process with your identity intact? In losing yourself in Christ’s plan, will you lose all those things that make you uniquely you?
I hope this will put you at ease. Who made you uniquely you? God did. Who gave you the particular blend of gifts, graces and quirks that make up your personality? God did. And if the One who made you has carefully crafted you so that you prefer pork chops but hate pork sausage or you like chocolate chip but not mint chocolate chip ice cream, then why do you suppose he would suddenly reverse all this meticulous crafting on a whim?
God has made you for his pleasure, and he is pleased with what he has made. He also made you for your own pleasure and like it or not you will be you for all eternity. A vocation doesn’t erase and rewrite your identity. It compliments it, fulfills it, elevates it and perfects it. A vocation is the way to a full flowering of your personality. Pardon a bit of schmaltz, but it’s like the caterpillar and the butterfly. Everything that was there when the caterpillar wrapped itself up in the cocoon is there when it emerges, but the transformation couldn’t be more dramatic!
From the pre-vocation point of view, this may be hard to swallow. Somehow we assume that God has something other than our best interests in mind. But talk to anyone who has actually gone through the difficult process of wrestling with God and finding his will. One who has said ‘yes’ to God can bear witness to the ever-unfolding wonder of finding oneself living out the Lord’s perfect plan. It is deeply satisfying.
A vocation, like a name, is unique to each person called. Yes, your vocation may be the same as someone else’s, but because you’re you, the way you live your vocation will be utterly your own. Priest? Mother? Husband? Monk? Sister? Whatever direction God leads you in will call forth new dimensions from the hidden depths of your being.
How could Jacob have known that the name he received that night would be known throughout the world and throughout human history? God called him Israel, one who “contended with divine and human beings and…prevailed” (Gen. 32:29). See the generosity of God. Jacob thought his name and his life would be gone and forgotten in a few short hours. Instead God secured his name for all future generations.
Do you still think God doesn’t have your own best interests in mind?
Novena Prayer
MY LORD GOD, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.
- Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude
© Abbey of Gethsemani
Make it My Own
Daily Discernment Workbook
BREAK OPEN YOUR BIBLE
1. “Not me, Lord!”
It’s not uncommon for those who are called by God to be resistant. Read the following vocation passages from the Bible and write a list of the “Not me!” objections you find. Then, to the right, write God’s response to those objections.
Moses Exodus 3:10-14, Ex 4:1-5, 10-16
Objection:
Response:
Objection:
Response:
Objection:
Response:
Jeremiah Jeremiah 1:4-9
Objection:
Response:
Isaiah Isaiah 6:1-7
Objection:
Response:
Zechariah Luke 1:10-20
Objection:
Response:
Peter Luke 5:4-10
Objection:
Response:
2. “Send Me”
Here’s the opposite scenario. These people heard God’s voice and responded. Read the following passages and write down the person who said yes, and the exact words they spoke in response to the Lord’s invitation.
Abraham - Genesis 22:1-3
His response:
God’s reward: (Genesis 22:16-18)
Mary - Luke 1:26-38
Her response:
God’s reward: (Luke 1:48)
A QUOTE TO NOTE
3. More Myself in God
The fear of losing what makes me uniquely me when I give myself fully to God is very real. But saints and spiritual writers tell us a consistent and marvelous message: the very opposite is true.
In human relationships it is possible for the dominant personality to flatten out the other until there is virtually nothing of the original character left. In the relationship with God where the soul is lost in the divine nature the case is entirely different: the original character is found. The man’s soul is more truly his own because it is united with, and realized in, God, than if it had followed nature and united itself with the things of this world.*
Whether the soul knows it or not, its true happiness is an identification with the happiness of God. Its end is to find itself in God. Where, consequently, the soul makes the happiness of God its own happiness, the holiness of God its own holiness, the life of God its own life, there can be no diminution of either power or identity but rather the reverse.
I move by the grace of God, and by the grace of God I am what I am. Because I move by the grace of God, I move all the faster. Because I am what I am by the grace of God, I am all the more myself.
Dom Hubert Van Zeller, The Inner Search
How do I see in the lives of the saints the wide variety of personalities God can work with?
How have I become MORE myself as I’ve followed God more closely?
Confirm Your Next Meeting with your Discernment Advisor. Do you have one yet? If not, now is the time to prioritize finding a trusted spiritual guide. This Novena won’t bear good fruit without accountability and risk. If you do have your DA, praise God and confirm your next meeting, which should happen after you complete Day 9 (tomorrow). Please don’t proceed until that meeting happens and you’ve discerned together that this is a good time for you to discern.
Here’s a helpful resource to use every time you meet. The last part is most practical.
Conclude with
“Glory be to the Father,
and to the Son,
and to the Holy Spirit.
As it was in the beginning,
is now, and ever shall be.
World without end, Amen.”
[0] Stranger Things, Season 1, episode 2: The Weirdo on Maple Street, by the Duffer Brothers, Netflix 2016
[1] Jesus of Nazareth, Vol. I, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, tr. by Adrian J. Walker, New York, Doubleday, 2007, p. 143
[2] Catechism of the Catholic Church, #203.
[3] The Inner Search, Dom Hubert Van Zeller, New York, Sheed and Ward Inc. 1957, p. 128
All Scripture quotes from the New American Bible, unless otherwise specified