The Sacred Name of Jesus is the Sacred Name of God

When God revealed his name to Moses, he revealed his name but at the same time he did not.  The name he revealed to Moses is YHWH (at the time Hebrew did not make written use of vowels); that is, I am He who was, who is and who will be (or something very like it; it is a difficult name to translate).
In giving this name, "He reveals the truth about who He is, but He refuses to take on himself a name like any other name, as it He were just one more in a long list of gods and goddesses who might be useful to Moses" (Bertram, Jesus, Teach Us to Pray, 77).
For this reason the Jews would not utter the Divine Name.  For this same reason the Holy See recently reminded Christians that they ought not to speak this name, either.  As Pope Benedict XVI has written, "The Israelites were perfectly right in refusing to utter this self-designation of God, expressed in the word YHWH, so as to avoid degrading it to the level of names of pagan deities.  By the same token, recent Bible translations were wrong to write out this name - which Israel always regarded as mysterious and unutterable - as if it were just any old name" (Jesus of Nazareth, 143).
Picking up where the Pope left off, Father Bertram left me quite speechless for a time when I read these words:

Writing out that Name is something that causes scandal and offence to the Jews, but never more so than when that Name was written up over the body of an executed criminal.  By one of the most bizarre workings of Providence, a Jewish hand wrote this, at the dictation of a pagan:

Yehoshua HaNozri, WuMelek HaYehudim

Jesus the Nazarene, and King of the Jews.

Pilate surely did not know or realize what prophecy he was uttering, though he claimed responsibility for it: "What I have written, I have written" (John 19:19, 22).  The Name that was so publicly disgraced has become the "Name above all other Names" (Philippians 2:9).  That is why we are to keep it holy (78).

I only hope I remember this come Good Friday.

The unutterable name

Our friends the New Liturgical Movement share with us the welcome decision of the Sacred Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments regarding the use of the Divine Name.

To over simplify the June 29th decision of the Congregation: the Divine Name is not to be used, neither in speech nor in text.

I welcome this decision and whole heartedly and wish it had only come sooner. I've long been disturbed at various songs that sign the name of God, the name that the Chosen People refused to utter.

One might well ask why this decision has been given. The answer is quite simply, really. It is a matter of respect for the Divine Name of God, the name that the Jewish people do not say and that the early never uttered.

His Emminence Francis Cardinal Arinze, Prefect of said Congregation, explains the reasoning thus:

The venerable biblical tradition of Sacred Scripture, known as the Old Testament, displays a series of divine appellations, among which is the sacred name of God revealed in the tetragrammaton YHWH... As an expression of the infinite greatness and majesty of God, it was held to be unpronnouncable and hence was replaced during the reading of Sacred Scripture by means of the use of an alternate name: "Adonai," which means "Lord."

The word tetragrammaton means something like "four letters." The name of God given in Hebrew is a series of four letters, transliterated in the Roman alphabet as YHWH. As you may know, ancient was written without the use of vowels and thus today it is translated in many different forms, with various degrees of accuracy.

This decision means that, "In liturgical celebrations, in songs and prayers the name of God in the form of the tetragrammaton YHWH is neither to be used nor pronounced."