The Circumcision of Christ

It is New Year’s Eve and the vigil of the Solemnity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother of God. In less than 40 minutes, the year 2008 will begin. Following is the gospel for tomorrow’s solemnity mass that I would like to consider tonight:
“The shepherds went in haste to Bethlehem and found Mary and Joseph, and the infant lying in the manger. When they saw this, they made known the message that had been told them about this child. All who heard it were amazed by what had been told them by the shepherds. And Mary kept all these things, reflecting on them in her heart. Then the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, just as it had been told to them. When eight days were completed for his circumcision, he was named Jesus, the name given him by the angel before he was conceived in the womb” (Luke 2:16-21).

Do you and I have the humility and simplicity as the shepherds did to run with urgency to find the Holy Family, especially to find the Son of God? Do I seek Him out? Am I amazed by the gospel or do we take it for granted, quickly turning my attention and heart to other concerns? I need to follow Mary’s example who took all these amazing events in and kept them in her heart to consider and unpack them. The shepherds left the Holy Family glorifying and praising God; do I do the same with the good news of salvation, bringing it back to my ordinary, everyday life? Does it affect how I life my life?

These miraculous events changed forever the lives of Joseph and Mary and I would assume the shepherds, too. All of these people who first encountered the living God made man had their hearts focused fully upon Him. They had an undivided heart that rejoiced in His birth, and their hearts were full for the joy of His arrival and for the love that enraptured their hearts. In proportion to how completely they opened their hearts in the direction of He Who Is Love their hearts were full and at peace.

The focus is the heart. When Jesus was eight days old, as was the age-old practice, he was circumcised and given His name. Circumcision in the Old Covenant is the pre-figurement of baptism in the New. They have a number of similarities: they are the passage way to entering the people of God, one is named as a part of the ritual, it is usually performed on infants, and it leaves a lasting mark. God added circumcision because of Abraham’s sin with Hagar as a penance and reminder that life does not come from our resources but is given as a gift by God. When Abraham fell, it was because his heart was hard and did not trust the promise of God to give him a son.

Circumcision is also a symbol of the need to cut away the stony outside of our heart so that we can have a new heart of flesh. It says in Deuteronomy 10:16: “Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no longer stubborn.” Circumcision at its deepest meaning is a matter of the heart as Paul said: “real circumcision is a matter of the heart, spiritual and not literal” (Romans 2:29).

The majority of Paul’s argument in Galatians is that we no longer need to be circumcised because circumcision was a symbol added because of sin, but now the reality has come. The reality is that Jesus’ heart was circumcised when He gave Himself up fully as a sacrifice on the cross and His heart was pierced. Circumcision is no longer needed because now we have been given the circumcision of Christ: baptism. We are baptized into Jesus’ death, and Jesus died because He trusted and obeyed fully with His heart. In baptism we are given Jesus’ faithful, crucified, pierced and resurrected heart so that we can be faithful, crucified, pierced and one day rise again, too.

In Paul’s letter to the Colossians he says much the same thing: “In him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of flesh in the circumcision of Christ; and you were buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead” (Colossians 2:11-12). Baptism is our circumcision and the real circumcision. In baptism we receive our new hearts, our new tree of life that we needed ever since the Fall when our first parents turned their hearts away from God and His singular prohibition.

As we celebrate today the circumcision of Jesus as an infant, we can look ahead to when He fulfills that Old Covenant sacrament when His body is nailed to the tree and His Sacred Heart is pierced. Today we can remember and celebrate our own baptism when we received the circumcision of Christ and re-dedicate our hearts to Him that they may be His alone, for that is why we were baptized in the first place. We can fulfill this holy day of obligation by going to mass and receiving Holy Communion which is the fulfillment and celebration of our baptism. In The Sacrament, we receive the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus, and the Body we receive is actually Jesus’ heart. It is all about the heart. It is all about eating the tree of life.

Thanks for reading and your prayers.
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