Devotion to the Holy Name of Jesus, the feast of which very fittingly occurs in the first month of the year, is a truly Franciscan devotion. So great was the reverence of our Seraphic Father for the holy name that he could not bear to see it exposed even to the slightest material profanation. "Wheresoever," he says in his "Instructions to All Clerics," "the names and written words of the Lord may be found in unseemly places they ought to be collected and put away in a becoming place." And Thomas of Celano writes: " Those who lived with him will remember how the name of Jesus was the daily, nay the continual, theme of his discourses."
St. Bernardine's Preaching
The worship of this adorable name was still more widely extended and popularized by the preaching of the disciples of St. Francis. One of the foremost of them, St. Bernardine of Siena, was not satisfied with preaching the holy name of Jesus in the cities and towns of Italy, he had the monogram of Our Lord, surrounded with rays, painted on httle tablets and advised all his hearers to procure one of these tablets for their homes. He himself always wore one, and he would show it to the people at the end of his sermon, inviting the congregation to bend the knee before the holy picture in honor of Jesus. This devotion had a great effect in producing reverence, love, and fear for the Saviour of mankind. When, in 1427, Bernardine was denounced to Pope Martin V for having introduced "a profane and idolatrous new devotion by exposing the people to the danger of adoring the letters of the name of Jesus, and not the Saviour Himself," the saint, accompanied by St. John Capistran and Blessed Matthew of Girgenti, pleaded the cause of the Holy Name so well that the Pope exhorted him to pursue his fruitful apostolate, to teach the people reverence and love for the Holy Name of Jesus, and, moreover, told him that he might present without fear to the veneration of the faithful the representation of this blessed name. Then he ordered a general procession in Rome in honor of
