By Metropolitan Ephraim of Boston
(Holy Orthodox Church in North America)
When our Saviour addressed the Holy Apostles with the words: “Receive ye the Holy Spirit,” He did not mean that they should receive the Essence or the Hypostasis of the Holy Spirit.
Why?
Because no creature can receive or partake of God’s Essence. If he were able to receive or partake of our God’s Essence, he would then be God Himself! But this is impossible for man, a creature. God is uncreated, whereas man is created. God is eternal by nature, whereas man is very much temporal. God is holy by nature, whereas man is obviously fallen and sinful.
But, by God’s Grace, all things are possible.
By God’s Grace, man too can become eternal. By Grace, man, a fallen creature, can and does become holy. By God’s Grace, men can become deified.
Moses the Ethiopian, the thief and murderer, could and did, by God’s Grace, become the meek Saint Moses the Ethiopian.
Mary the dissolute prostitute of Egypt, could and did, by God’s Grace, become Saint Mary of Egypt, the clairvoyant, the supremely-wise, the pure bride of Christ.
So, when the first verse of Psalm 19 blesses us with the words:
The Lord hear thee in the day of affliction;
the Name of the God of Jacob defend thee
it is similar to the words, “Receive ye the Holy Spirit.” As we mentioned above, we do not—indeed, we cannot—receive the Essence or the Hypostasis of the Holy Spirit, but we can and do receive the Grace of the Holy Spirit. So that is what our Saviour is actually saying here: “Receive ye the Grace of the Holy Spirit.”
Likewise, when the Psalmist says, “The Name of the God of Jacob defend thee,” he means “the Power, the uncreated Grace, of the God of Jacob defend thee.”
As we have pointed out elsewhere, “the Name of God (its inner significance and meaning and not its outward letters and sounds) is the divinely-revealed Truth about God Himself; like all revelation of God about Himself, it is His Power, His Energy, His Grace. According to the teaching of the Church, the Grace of God is God Himself (not His Essence, but His Energy). Hence, it is in this sense that St. John of Kronstadt’s famous saying ‘The Name of God is God Himself’ should be understood.” St. Clement of Rome’s statement that “the Name of God gave existence to all creation” must likewise be understood in this sense.
This, too, is precisely what the Prophet David says when he makes the following parallel:
And the heathen shall fear Thy Name, O Lord,
And all the kings of the earth Thy Glory.
(Psalm 101:15)
This, exactly, is what St. Cyril of Alexandria also says:
[John 17:11: “Keep them in Thy Name which Thou hast given Me.”] He says that His disciples ought to be kept in the Name of the Father, that is to say, in the Glory and Power of His Godhead, so that they should be out of the power of the enemy.
(Commentary on the Gospel of St. John 11.9 [John 17:16–17])
Therefore, when we pronounce the Name of God, when we write or read it, when we imprint it in our minds, that is the created aspect, which belongs to our human speech. It is a word, a verbal icon, a created symbol. But the Truth that these created names contain and express, the Truth that shines and flows from them, this Truth is both eternal and uncreated, and it exists whether we articulate it or not. This Truth of God, this Truth about God, as revealed by God Himself, is the uncreated Name of God; it is His Glory, Power, Majesty, Grace, etc. This is the Name of God that the Church has been glorifying and praising from the very foundation of the world, and which she will continue to magnify unto endless ages. As St. John of Tobolsk (+1715) puts it so concisely:
The chosen ones of God greatly desire that the Name of God, His Wisdom, Power, Mercy, and Truth be venerated in holiness by all the nations and tribes, that all the peoples (as creatures of one God) should live in peace and concord.
In Accordance with the Divine Will, Chapter 4
The Name of God is not just a created symbol, as some say (although it is that too); it is, more importantly, God’s uncreated Power and Grace.
“Receive ye the Holy Spirit.”
“The Name of the God of Jacob defend thee.”
And when they were near to the land, which God had promised to Abraham and his seed, Moses chose a man from every tribe, and sent them to search out the land and the cities therein and the dwellers in the cities. At that time God revealed to him the Name which alone is able to save them that believe thereon; and Moses changed the name of Ausses the son of Navi, one of them that were sent, and named him Jesus; and so he sent them forth with the power of the Name, believing that he should receive them back safe and sound through the guidance of the Name, which came to pass.
Abominable men and full of all wickedness were inflamed to such a degree of wrath that they cast into tortures those who, with a holy and a blameless purpose, served God, not knowing that the Most High is a champion and shield of those who with a pure conscience offer adoration* to His Most Holy Name, to whom be glory unto the ages of ages. Amen.
There is nothing left for the monk except this one thing: to wash the eyes of his heart with the tears of his face while repeating with the Psalmist: "Every night I flood my bed with my tears; I drench my couch with my weeping" (Ps. 6:6), and to touch the fringes of Jesus' cloak (cf. Matt. 14:36) while crying, like the blind man of the Gospel: "Lord have mercy on me, that I may receive my sight!" (Luke 18:39-41), such that the darkness may be scattered by the invocation of the Name of the Lord. The Name of Jesus, of One of the Holy Trinity, becomes thus the personal and inner echo of the divine voice that the disciples heard on Tabor coming from the cloud in order to bear witness to the Savior's divinity. Christ makes Himself present here through the sacrament of His Name, and dim night is transfigured into "bright cloud," into a darkness where God dwells. 
"You await from me an answer concerning name-glorifying [imiaslavie]. I will attempt to answer your question very briefly and systematically, or more accurately – to outline only that which I would like to say (otherwise one would have to write volumes, so substantive is this theme). The (dogmatic) question about the Divine Name, about verbal-intellectual expressions (“symbols”) of the Divinity are as important as the question of icons. Just as then, the Orthodox formulation of the Truth about icons became a “triumph of Orthodoxy,” so too, now, the Orthodox teaching about names, as well as all the questions connected with it (the teaching of St. Gregory Palamas, forgotten by many – grace, prayer, authentic “anthropology,” teaching about the mind and heart, about the “inner man” and so on) – must lead to a new Triumph of Orthodoxy, to the appearance of new grace-filled strength and holiness. The question about “name-glorifying” stands somewhere in the depth of Church consciousness. It has not yet received an answer (a truer formulation: the Church always has an answer, but one needs to hear and express it). But the “name-glorifying controversies” outlined two currents in Russian theology, consciously or unconsciously being defined in relation to “name-glorifying.” One current – the opponents of name-glorifiers, rejecting the very question of the veneration of the Name: this is mere “iconoclasm,” rationalism, seeing in religion only a volitional aspect and blind to nature (Divine grace); such was Metropolitan Anthony [Khrapovitsky], as the most striking example. The other tendencies – not always openly and openly affiliated with name-glorifying – represent, nonetheless, an extreme, “name-worshiping” [“imiabozhnoe”] in its expression, where the very spoken matter, the “flesh” so to speak of the name becomes Divine by nature, a sort of natural power (just as if the opponents of iconoclasm began to affirm the Divine “uncreatedness” of the board and paint of the icon). This last tendency – in the broad sense – develops as Sophiology, where God and creation are confused. Both one and the other are false. The path to the Orthodox understanding of name-glorifying lies through the careful, still overly pale, formula of Archbishop Theophan (of Poltava): “In the Divine Name the Divinity is honored” (Divine energy). When there will be a clear formula, using spiritual experience and “obviously” spiritual – many questions will fall aside on their own, and many difficulties will become childishly simple."
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