Dear Friends,
It was three o’clock in the afternoon. The sun baked the stones as I stood in Ancient Magdala peering into an excavated complex. Jewish purification baths sat unused but impressively on display. This is one the first-century town’s many features that would attract an orthodox Jew to step into a Catholic run site, although that was a rare occasion.
The phone rang, reminding me that I was late in handing it over to our newly trained visitor coordinator. I answered it.
“Hello, This is Magdala. How may I help you?”
Silence on the other side.
“Hello?” I repeated.
“Hello,” a hesitant voice finally responded, his Israeli accent evident. “I, um, I wanted to know if, um, there is power in the name of Jesus?”
This has to be another prank call. Next he will tell me he is Joseph and his wife’s name is Mary. It won’t be the first time. I was about to raise my defenses when “something” told me to treat this person as one making a genuine inquiry.
I responded, while sending up a silent prayer, “Yes, there is power in the name of Jesus. May I ask why you called?”
More hesitation and then he confessed. “Well, I was there a year ago with my friends to see the archaeology, and I wandered closer to the sea and entered a building there. And I heard people saying the name of Jesus, and I felt something all over my body. I haven’t been able to forget that moment.”
That phone call began a unique friendship that only the Holy Spirit could orchestrate: An orthodox Jewish man and his ten children with a Catholic consecrated woman. Every time I revisit that moment, I am struck by his first question.
We’re in a world that uses the name of Jesus as an expletive, creating indifference toward the sacredness of the name we are called to hold in reverence. It is the “name above all other names … At the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Phil 2:9-11).
What a wonder it is that a simple heartfelt utterance of the name of Jesus becomes the catalyst to the unleashing of his power! By it, he reached into the depth of a human heart in a basement chapel on the shores of the Sea of Galilee. Don’t underestimate the simplest prayer, just one word: Jesus!
Your Friend in Christ,
Jennifer Ristine
Jennifer lives in the formation center for the consecrated women of Regnum Christi in Madrid, Spain, and is the author of “Mary Magdalene, Insights from Ancient Magdala” and “Nine Days with Mary Magdalene.”
