What is in a name? – by Fr. Evan Armatas
The other day, as I was preparing for our Wednesday evening prayer service, I came across a name that made me stop and think. Every day the church has set aside specific names that are to be commemorated or brought to mind. Many times the names are unusual or obscure but sometimes they are obvious and well-known, like Moses or St. Luke the Evangelist. That day, the name was Cleopas, and that name reminded me of my days in Seminary.
When I first arrived at the Seminary, I was quite lost and to be honest uneducated about my faith. I remember my first trip to the school’s chapel, how I arrived in shorts and flip flops, for a service about which I knew nothing: Vespers. I registered for classes that made no sense to me: Liturgics, Dogmatics, and Patristics. I also encountered names for the first time that were new, unusual, and unknown to me. One name was Cleopas, I had never heard the name before and I was uncertain of its origin.
Fr. Cleopas was the Registrar at the school, and so he was one of the first priests I met at Holy Cross. He was a beautiful man, kind, educated, and a bit young, his beard had no grey. He was from Greece, but he had studied for his doctorate in America, and so his English was perfect. In time, I got to know him fairly well, and on one afternoon while visiting his office, I asked him where he got his name.
Cleopas was not his name from birth. Father was a monk and when he had been tonsured, his name was changed, and the name he received was Cleopas. Picking a name is an important task; it can say so much about what we value. Father Cleopas had been disappointed when the bishop who had tonsured him changed his name to Cleopas. He had hoped for something “better.” He had hoped for a name people would easily recognize like Matthew or John. Or perhaps a name that could easily be associated with an event in the life of the church like Evangelos or Anastasios.
He told me how his disappointment grew and that he often thought of having a different name. He felt that Cleopas, the actual man, was obscure at best and his role in the life of the church unimportant. Finally, he expressed his disappointment to his spiritual father who was surprised to hear of Fr. Cleopas’ feelings about his name. His spiritual father wondered how Fr. Cleopas could feel this way about his name. Not only was Cleopas a recognizable figure in the New Testament, but his actions brought to mind an important event in the life of the church. Cleopas after all was an important name, an important person, why he was one of the first to see the Risen Lord!
How silly I felt when Fr. Cleopas began to relate the story about his namesake found in the Gospel of St. Luke, Luke 24.13-35. I had never heard of Cleopas, and the story was unfamiliar to me. Cleopas was one of the first to see the Risen Lord. On Sunday, the day Christ had risen from the tomb, Cleopas and another disciple were journeying from Jerusalem to Emmaus a small village a day’s walk from the city. During their journey Christ joined them and he opened Cleopas’ heart and interpreted all of the scriptures related to Himself. He explained to Cleopas and his companion why it was that the Christ had to suffer and die. Towards evening when they drew near to the village of Emmaus, Christ entered the inn they were staying at, and took bread, blessed it, broke it, and gave it to them. Up to that moment Cleopas and the other disciple had not recognized that it had been Christ Himself who had spent the day with them. However, the scriptures tell us that the second they received the blessed bread from Christ’s hands, “. . .their eyes were opened and they recognized him.” They immediately left Emmaus and journeyed back to Jerusalem finding the eleven disciples, “. . .they told [them] what had happened on the road, and how he was known to them in the breaking of the bread.”
So the other day when I read in the Church’s list of Saints to be commemorated the name Cleopas, I stopped, thought, and prayed. It was powerful to bring to mind this great Saint, a man who walked with the Risen Christ and had been counted as one of the 70 apostles of Christ. He had proclaimed to the eleven disciples that the Lord was indeed Risen and how He was known in the breaking of the bread. He had been one of the first to celebrate the Lord’s Supper, the Eucharist, on Sunday. This mystical event, this mystical supper we still participate in every Sunday and our Risen Lord is still known to each of us in the breaking of the bread. We are fortunate to inherit a faith that does not forget those who have walked before us in Christ. Their lives serve as examples for each of us and their prayers along with ours are still offered up to Christ.
St. Cleopas, Apostle, One of the 70, Feast Day, October 30
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