Name of Jesus, Feast of the

NAME OF JESUS, Feast of the. - Celebrated, since the reform of Pius X, on the Sunday falling between 2 and 5 January, and, when this is lacking, on 2 January, with the rite of a double of the second class.

A liturgical feast in honor of the Name of Jesus existed in various places already before 1530, though without any permission from the Holy See, even under the title: Triumph of the Most Holy Name of Jesus. Bernardino de' Bustis (v.), who had composed and published, with the approval of Sixtus IV, an Officium et Missa gloriosi Nominis Jesu (Milan 1492), could not, however, obtain the liturgical use of his composition. Finally in 1530 Clement VII approved the said Office with the Mass, fixing the liturgical celebration on 14 January. The Franciscans, Augustinians, Mercedarians, Trinitarians, Carmelites, then the Society of Jesus, to name only some Orders, and the dioceses of Siena (1582), of Florence (1643) and many others accepted the feast. At Antwerp, in the church of the convent of St. Michael, the feast was in use, through the piety of a layman, one Hippolytus, as early as 1458, and, in the form of a festive liturgical celebration, from 1492, but on 15 January, a date later followed by many other dioceses, and by the Dominicans, who remained faithful to it until 1923. Finally, in 1721 (29 Nov.-20 Dec.), Innocent XIII, at the request of Emperor Charles VI, extended the feast of the Name of Jesus to the whole Church, as a double of the second class, designating for it the second Sunday of January. Then came the reform of Pius X with the motu proprio Abhinc duos annos of 23 October 1913, which designated instead the Sunday between 2 and 5 January (AAS, 5 [1913], pp. 458-60).

Litanies of the Most Holy Name of Jesus. - Litanic invocations of the Name of Jesus are already known in the Middle Ages. In the seventeenth century various litanies in honor of Jesus, of the Savior, of the Name of Jesus, circulated in the various books of piety, owed to unknown authors, though sometimes attributed without foundation to St. Bernard, St. Bernardino of Siena, Bernardino de' Bustis and others. The severe prohibition of Clement VIII (1601) against publishing other litanies not approved, except those of the saints and the "Lauretane", did not cause the various private litanies of the Name of Jesus to disappear. Indeed, on several occasions the Sacred Congregation of Rites was urged to approve them, as, for example, in 1631 by the Augustinians of Montescalfioso, in 1640 by the Priests of the Mission of Paris, and shortly afterwards by the archdiocese of Paris itself (1642), but always in vain. Finally in 1862, on the occasion of the solemn canonization of the Japanese martyrs, many bishops came together in Rome; they humbly presented to Pius IX the plea that he might have compiled, on the basis of the various current formularies, a single litany of solid content in honor of the Name of Jesus, in order to grant its universal use. This was in fact published in 1876 (23 March: Acta S. Sedis, 9 [1876], pp. 366-68), with an indulgence of 300 days, but solely for those Ordinaries who had made request for it. Only in 1886 (16 Jan.)

Leo XIII approved the said litany for the whole Church, and for public liturgical use (ibid., 18 [1886], p. 509), with the same indulgence, raised by Pius XI in 1933 (2 Jan.) to seven years (Enchiridion Indulgentiarum, 1950, n. 114).

Giuseppe Löw