The Heart Holds a Foretaste of Heaven

Not quite a week ago, I started writing a bit about Saint Augustine’s “Of Holy Virginity.” I have now read some more of it and will continue my reflections of it. As stated earlier, Saint Augustine spends the first section of his document on explaining that virginity is a higher calling and gift than marriage. In the middle, he spends a great deal of time talking about the need for virgins not to become, therefore, proud. He talks about Mary Magdalene and how she loves much because she was forgiven much; virgins need to thank God who kept them from falling into many sins, for apart from His divine help, they would, also, have taken that unhappy path.

In the course of this discussion on the need for humility, Saint Augustine mentions Saint Paul and says: “The Apostle says, ‘But I would that all men were as I myself; but each one hath his own proper gift from God; one in this way, and another in that way.’ Who therefore bestoweth these gifts? Who distributeth his own proper gifts unto each as He will? Forsooth God, with Whom there is not unrighteousness, and by this means with what equity He makes some in this way, and others in that way, for man to know is either impossible or altogether hard: but that with equity He maketh, it is not lawful to doubt. ‘What,’ therefore, ‘hast thou, which thou hast not received?’ And by what perversity dost thou less love Him, of Whom thou hast received more?” (#41). God makes different people for different purposes, and every good thing we have and are have been given to us by God. Those who have received much, those given the grace of virginity, should therefore love the more.

So if a virgin is not to be proud, “What therefore should a virgin do, what should she think, that she vaunt not herself above those, men or women, who have not this so great gift? For she ought not to feign humility, but to set it forth: for the feigning of humility is greater pride” (#44). Although virginity is a higher gift, how one lives virginity is an entirely different matter. To begin with, all God-given vocations are a gift from Him. Also, only God is able to judge how well and truly one lives his vocation, whether it be a high, medium or low calling by God. Whatever the greatness or lowness of the calling by God, each vocation is the very path God has called that one to reach heaven. Each path lived well and faithfully leads to deep union with God.

Several paragraphs later Saint Augustine continues the answer of what a virgin should think: “She hath, I say, a subject for thought, that she be not puffed up, that she rival not; forsooth that she so make profession that the virginal good is much greater and better than the married good, as that yet she know not whether this or that married woman be not already able to suffer for Christ, but herself as yet unable, and she herein spared, that her weakness is not put to the question by trial” (#47). Yes, virginity is objectively better than marriage, but they are both good and are pathways to holiness.

We cannot judge or compare ourselves with anyone for we do not know the heart; only God sees that. People with lower vocations may love God and be ready to witness to Him to the point of shedding their blood more than those with higher vocations. The hierarchal placement of the vocation tells us nothing about the holiness of the person. Residing in the heart is the love of God that is a foretaste of heaven, and we simply don’t have access to that knowledge. The best we can do on that front is to try to examine the fruit of that heart, but even that is often done poorly and partially. Thankfully, we have not been given the impossible task of judging another’s heart. God takes care of that for us. Our job is simply to love Him and our neighbor as our self.

Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.
All rights reserved.

We Keep His Commandments

The end of today’s reading from the first Letter of Saint John struck me: “For the love of God is this, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome, for whoever is begotten by God conquers the world. And the victory that conquers the world is our faith” (5:3-4). If we replace “keep his commandments” with “obedience,” it would say, “The love of God is shown in our obedience to Him.” Jesus said the same thing: “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15). We show our love through our obedience.

Love gurgles up from a faithful heart that obeys; therefore, God’s laws are not difficult because we have conquered the world through our faith and become His children. When we love God above all things, then we want to please Him above all else, even over all the allurements of the world. In seeking His will only, we conquer the world and faithfully obey our Heavenly Father’s every command.

The united and interwoven themes today are love, obedience, faith, and God’s children. It is the “obedience of faith” (Romans 1:5 & 16:26) that reveals and proves our love, the love of a child for His father. Jesus came to make us children of God and a new creation and to give us a new heart, a new tree of life that loves and trusts in Him and so obeys Him. Now we can draw close to God and give ourselves entirely to Him; He gives us the grace to become one with Him. That union is a foretaste of heaven. That union, when it comes to complete fruition, is the mystical marriage when our heart and will and life are totally taken up into God. Therein is pure peace and joy. That is the goal of life.

Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.
All rights reserved.

We Do What Pleases Him

There was a beautiful quote from today’s first reading from the first Letter of Saint John that I want to highlight tonight: “Beloved: We receive from him whatever we ask, because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him” (1 John 3:22).

“Please.” Please is a magical word. My mom always told me it was the magic word. We want to please God; therefore, we keep His commandments, and that is why He answers our prayers. On the relational path of pleasing another, we start off wanting to please Our Heavenly Father, and we end up wanting to please our divine Spouse and Bridegroom, Jesus.

My wife is leaning over my shoulder as we eat salsa, hommus, and chips, and she said that God doesn’t always answer our prayers. That is true, for God does not answer every one of our prayers as we want. Let me come back to explain this after I explain something else first.

Yesterday I was talking about Saint Augustine’s book on virginity, and he was quoting and discussing what Saint Paul was saying about marriage and virginity. Paul said: “The unmarried man is anxious about the affairs of the Lord, how to please the Lord; but the married man is anxious about worldly affairs, how to please his wife, and his interests are divided. And the unmarried woman or girl is anxious about the affairs of the Lord, how to be holy in body and spirit; but the married woman is anxious about worldly affairs, how to please her husband” (1 Corinthians 7:32-34). The married seek to please their spouse; the virgins seek to please their divine Spouse. This does not mean that married people do not try to please the Lord, but it means that virgins have the ability to have more of an “undivided attention” for God.

The word “please” is a word often used in reference to a spouse. We seek to please the one to whom we are married, and it is right and good to do so. Virgins dedicated to God live the life of heaven here on earth and take God as their sole and primary Spouse. They sacrifice the very great good of an earthly spouse to gain the even greater good of the divine Spouse.

All of us are called to please the Lord and to love Him with all of our heart, mind, soul, and strength. Insofar as we love Him and give ourselves to Him, we grow closer to Him and draw closer to becoming His spouse. After drawing close to Him, we do keep His commandments and we do seek to please Him; our wills more and more become as one. Our will and mind ever more closely conform to His will and mind. Our heart loves Him, and we seek to please Him. It is in this state of conformity of our mind and will to God that in our prayer we ask for what pleases God, and He always gives it because it is what He wanted to give all along.

Jesus, in His humanity, struggled with this conformity of His will to the divine will in the Garden of Gethsemane as He prayed, “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt” (Matthew 26:39). He did not want to undergo all the suffering that He knew was right around the corner, at least not in His humanity He didn’t. But above all else, Jesus was of one will with the Father, and so that conformity and obedience to the Father is what He wanted in His heart of hearts. He concludes His prayer to be spared the suffering with the prayer to be in union with the Father’s will. In the end, His prayer is only to do the Father’s will.

How do I pray with the very prayer of God? If we give ourselves trustingly into God’s hands, He will teach us and help us to pray: “Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words. And he who searches the hearts of men knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God” (Romans 8:26-27). Eventually, if we do not give up and rely increasingly more and more on Him, His heart will become our heart, and His will will become our will.

When you and I love God with a full heart and mind, when our tree of life is strong and bearing good fruit every month, then our prayer will be the very prayer of God Himself, and we will receive whatever we ask of our Father and of our Husband: “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide; so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you. 17 This I command you, to love one another” (John 15:16-17).

Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.
All rights reserved.

Marriage=Good;Marriage to God=Best

I have continued my reading of “Of Holy Virginity” by Saint Augustine. In paragraph eighteen he is talking to those who have made commitments to perpetual virginity that they see their path, as Saint Paul did, as higher than marriage, which is itself good. Marriage is good, and virginity for the sake of the Kingdom of God is better. In my words I say: Marriage to a human person is good, and marriage to God is the best.

“Wherefore I admonish both men and women who follow after perpetual continence and holy virginity, that they so set their own good before marriage, as that they judge not marriage an evil: and that they understand that it was in no way of deceit, but of plain truth that it was said by the Apostle, ‘Whoso gives in marriage does well; and whoso gives not in marriage, does better; and, if thou shalt have taken a wife, thou hast not sinned; and, if a virgin shall have been married, she sinneth not;’ and a little after, ‘But she wilt be more blessed, if she shall have continued so, according to my judgment.’ And, that the judgment should not be thought human, he adds, ‘But I think I also have the Spirit of God’.” (18)

In the next paragraph Saint Augustine combats the two extremes: one, to say marriage is bad, and two, that marriage and virginity for God are equal. “For whereas both are errors, either to equal marriage to holy virginity, or to condemn it: by fleeing from one another to excess, these two errors come into open collision, in that they have been unwilling to hold the mean of truth: whereby, both by sure reason and authority of holy Scriptures, we both discover that marriage is not a sin, and yet equal it not to the good either of virginal or even of widowed chastity. Some forsooth by aiming at virginity, have thought marriage hateful even as adultery: but others, by defending marriage, would have the excellence of perpetual continence to deserve nothing more than married chastity….” (19)

A bit further on, the saint again addresses virgins encouraging them to love God in their particular manner, to love God more: “Therefore go on, Saints of God, boys and girls, males and females, unmarried men, and women; go on and persevere unto the end. Praise more sweetly the Lord, Whom ye think on more richly: hope more happily in Him, Whom ye serve more instantly: love more ardently Him, whom ye please more attentively. With loins girded, and lamps burning, wait for the Lord, when He cometh from the marriage. Ye shall bring unto the marriage of the Lamb a new song, which ye shall sing on your harps. Not surely such as the whole earth singeth, unto which it is said, ‘Sing unto the Lord a new song; sing unto the Lord, the whole earth’: but such as no one shall be able to utter but you.” (27) The virgin should have a special love for God, a special love for the heavenly Bridegroom.

Where does that leave me, a married man who seeks to follow Christ? How can I perfectly follow one who was a virgin? “Therefore let the rest of the faithful, who have lost virginity, follow the Lamb, not whithersoever He shall have gone, but so far as ever they shall have been able. But they are able every where, save when He walks in the grace of virginity.” (28) I can follow Christ in all things save virginity; I have a beautiful song of praise I can sing for my Lord. The virgin has a different and better song of praise that only a virgin can sing, and I am happy that they have that special song of praise to offer God. We each offer our own songs as we each follow our own callings from God. We have an equality with each other as different parts of the body are all a part of one body; yet some parts are more exalted than others, and we need all the parts to make a body.

Paul says it well in 1 Corinthians 12:14-26: For the body does not consist of one member but of many. If the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would be the hearing? If the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell? But as it is, God arranged the organs in the body, each one of them, as he chose. If all were a single organ, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, yet one body. The eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you,” nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.” On the contrary, the parts of the body which seem to be weaker are indispensable, and those parts of the body which we think less honorable we invest with the greater honor, and our unpresentable parts are treated with greater modesty, which our more presentable parts do not require. But God has so composed the body, giving the greater honor to the inferior part, that there may be no discord in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together.

Everyone, married or virgin, is called to marriage with God. The virgin for the sake of the Kingdom lives that marriage to God in a particularly immediate way, but we are all called to that divine intimacy through deep prayer.

Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.
All rights reserved.

Virginity = Fruitfulness = Marriage (to God)

I plan to spend more time in future entries looking at Early Church Fathers and Church documents. Tonight I spent some time reading Saint Augustine’s work called, “Of Holy Virginity” or “De Virginitate.” I read the first twelve paragraphs, and I found four selections worth sharing.

The first comes from paragraph two: “Mary bare the Head of This Body after the flesh, the Church bears the members of that Body after the Spirit. In both virginity hinders not fruitfulness: in both fruitfulness takes not away virginity.” Normally, we think of virginity as being synonymous with barrenness. But in Mary and in the Church, virginity is synonymous with fruitfulness. This ties together well with my main theory; it is also interesting to note that no one is a member of the Church through natural birth. Natural birth does not work and is not enough. We need to be born again. In baptism, we are born again and become a new creation as a child of the virgin mother the Church.

In paragraph four, Saint Augustine talks about how Mary had already made a vow of perpetual virginity before the Angel Gabriel appeared to her: “This is shown by the words which Mary spake in answer to the Angel announcing to her her conception; ‘How,’ saith she, ‘shall this be, seeing I know not a man?’ Which assuredly she would not say, unless she had before vowed herself unto God as a virgin. But, because the habits of the Israelites as yet refused this, she was espoused to a just man, who would not take from her by violence, but rather guard against violent persons, what she had already vowed.” This ties in with my thoughts on Mary’s test.

Saint Augustine moves on in paragraph six to distinguish and compare marriage to virginity: “Forsooth both faithful women who are married, and virgins dedicated to God, by holy manners, and charity out of a pure heart, and good conscience, and faith unfeigned, because they do the will of the Father, are after a spiritual sense mothers of Christ. But they who in married life give birth to (children) after the flesh, give birth not to Christ, but to Adam, and therefore run, that their offspring having been dyed in His Sacraments, may become members of Christ, forasmuch as they know what they have given birth to.” In other words, anyone, a married woman or a virgin, who does the will of God is a mother to Christ. Married women, through natural generation, give birth only to a child who is not Christ but a son of man, so mothers run their child over to the Church to have their child be reborn as a child of God, as another Christ.

In paragraph twelve, Saint Augustine has a good paragraph on the distinction between marriage and the life of virginity. “Let marriages possess their own good, not that they beget sons, but that honestly, that lawfully, that modestly, that in a spirit of fellowship they beget them, and educate them, after they have been begotten, with cooperation, with wholesome teaching, and earnest purpose: in that they keep the faith of the couch one with another; in that they violate not the sacrament of wedlock. All these, however, are offices of human duty: but virginal chastity and freedom through pious continence from all sexual intercourse is the portion of Angels, and a practice, in corruptible flesh, of perpetual incorruption. To this let all fruitfulness of the flesh yield, all chastity of married life; the one is not in (man’s) power, the other is not in eternity; free choice hath not fruitfulness of the flesh, heaven hath not chastity of married life. Assuredly they will have something great beyond others in that common immortality, who have something already not of the flesh in the flesh.”

Marriage is very good, but virginity is the best, Saint Augustine is saying. Marriage is very good when children are well begotten and well raised and when the couple is faithful to the sacred marriage vows. However, marriage is of this world; there is no marriage in heaven. Virginity is possible through supernatural grace, is the portion of Angels, is the life of eternity, and will be greatly rewarded both on earth and in heaven.

The Church teaches that virginity is an objectively higher calling than marriage. Marriage is holy and good, yet virginity is better. Both are a vocation or calling. What matters to an individual is the question, “What is God calling me to?” God has different callings for different people; whatever He calls one to is the path He wants that one to take to get to heaven. Everyone is called to holiness and sanctity and to deep prayer. Marriage is a great and holy calling of God, and it is my personal path to holiness.

One last thought: marriage and virginity are essentially the same thing: they are both marriage. The first is marriage to another human person, and the second is marriage to God here on earth. There are of course many practical differences between the two, but at their essential core, they are of the same stuff. In the end, everyone in heaven will have no human person as a spouse, but we will all be married to God. God is asking you, “Will you marry me?” That is an invitation, no matter what your vocation, to deep communion with Him.

Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.
All rights reserved.

Eucharistic/Marital Poem

I want to share another poem I wrote as an undergraduate in college; this one is one of the poems I published in the Franciscan University of Steubenville’s literary magazine. I gave no title to this poem:

Bonded by Your Flesh and Blood
My sisters and brothers and I gather together
We—the ring around Your finger
The bride of Your bedchamber
Beam with joy
The beating drums
Within the walls of our temples
Within the enclosure of our ribs
Pound out Your praises
Dancing—we twirl together
Together forever
Forever as one
The ring around Your finger
The bride of Your bedchamber
You are our blood
Your blood is light
Lightning is our blood
Twirling we dance around
Adorned we dance for You
We are the bride of Your bedchamber
The Most High God takes delight
Yes! You delight


Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.
All rights reserved.

Nupital Union

Lately, the daily readings at Mass cover some key points that I want to make, and tomorrow’s reading is no exception. The passage I will examine is the first reading which comes from 1 John 3:7-10:
“Children, let no one deceive you. The person who acts in righteousness is righteous, just as he is righteous. Whoever sins belongs to the Devil, because the Devil has sinned from the beginning. Indeed, the Son of God was revealed to destroy the works of the Devil. No one who is begotten by God commits sin, because God’s seed remains in him; he cannot sin because he is begotten by God. In this way, the children of God and the children of the Devil are made plain; no one who fails to act in righteousness belongs to God, nor anyone who does not love his brother.”

To be saved, we have to be righteous, and to be righteous, we have to act in righteousness. Salvation is not some external imputation, for if it is merely an external imputation, then we would still be attached to serious sin, and whoever sins belongs to the Devil. The works of the Devil are to lead us into and keep us bound to sin. The work of God destroys these evil works and gives us the grace to act in righteousness, for there is no salvation apart from interior holiness. With God’s grace, we are truly God’s children with His seed within us which helps us to do and love the good, which helps us to actually love our brother. God transforms us into Himself and perfects and elevates our nature. He seeks the greatest intimacy with you and me, and the symbol of that intimacy is that of marriage.

I end tonight with some words of our beloved Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, from his general audience of Wednesday, May 2, 2007, where he quotes the early Church Father, Origen, as well as John Paul the Great:
“The prayer of the Alexandrian [Origen] thus attained the loftiest levels of mysticism, as is attested to by his Homilies on the Song of Songs. A passage is presented in which Origen confessed: ‘I have often felt - God is my witness - that the Bridegroom came to me in the most exalted way. Then he suddenly left, and I was unable to find what I was seeking. Once again, I am taken by the desire for his coming and sometimes he returns, and when he has appeared to me, when I hold him with my hands, once again he flees from me, and when he has vanished I start again to seek him...’ ”(Hom. in Cant. 1, 7).
“I remember what my Venerable Predecessor wrote as an authentic witness in Novo Millennio Ineunte, where he showed the faithful ‘how prayer can progress, as a genuine dialogue of love, to the point of rendering the person wholly possessed by the divine Beloved, vibrating at the Spirit's touch, resting filially within the Father's heart’.”
“ ‘It is’, John Paul II continues, ‘a journey totally sustained by grace, which nonetheless demands an intense spiritual commitment and is no stranger to painful purifications.... But it leads, in various possible ways, to the ineffable joy experienced by mystics as ‘nuptial union' ” ”(n. 33).

God proposes to you saying, “Will you marry me?”

Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.
All rights reserved.

We are God's True Children

Tomorrow’s first reading is a mighty one, and again it is from the first Letter of Saint John. I will provide it here in its entirety:
“If you consider that God is righteous, you also know that everyone who acts in righteousness is begotten by him. See what love the Father has bestowed on us that we may be called the children of God. Yet so we are. The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we shall be has not yet been revealed. We do know that when it is revealed we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. Everyone who has this hope based on him makes himself pure, as he is pure. Everyone who commits sin commits lawlessness, for sin is lawlessness. You know that he was revealed to take away sins, and in him there is no sin. No one who remains in him sins; no one who sins has seen him or known him” (2:29-3:6).

God actually makes us His children; we are not just called His children. God is pure, and there is no sin in Him. We become like Him when we grow in purity and righteousness; those who remain in sin are not really his children. His children make themselves pure and are not attached to serious sin. A good tree bears good fruit. The gospel is that with God’s grace, we become His children, are made a new creation, and actually become inwardly and outwardly good. Salvation is not just getting into heaven. Salvation is being transformed into another Christ and becoming partakers of the divine nature as Saint Peter said:

“His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, that through these you may escape from the corruption that is in the world because of passion, and become partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:3-4).

God’s power makes us His children and frees us from the slavery of sin and death and transforms us into Himself. We share in His divine nature and become pure as He is pure. His heart and mind we take on, and it changes everything we do. Now we live for Him and love and think as He loves and thinks. The law is written upon our new heart of flesh, and we actually desire to do what pleases Him. We don’t just worry about getting into trouble or going to hell like a slave would do; we actually love Him and are careful not to hurt the one we love more than life. We are God’s children now, and if we give ourselves more and more to Him and grow in our prayer life and ability to truly love, God will perfect us and make us into His bride. Then we will fully become one flesh with Him.

Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.
All rights reserved.

We Shall All Know the Lord

The first reading for tomorrow’s mass is from the first Letter of Saint John, and I would like to take a portion of this reading as my jumping off point tonight:
“As for you, the anointing that you received from him remains in you, so that you do not need anyone to teach you. But his anointing teaches you about everything and is true and not false; just as it taught you, remain in him. And now, children, remain in him, so that when he appears we may have confidence and not be put to shame by him at his coming” (2:27-28).

John is addressing the “children” or those who are babes in their understanding of the faith. They were anointed certainly at their baptism and perhaps also at their confirmation. The anointing of baptism remains inside us to teach us about the truth, and we, in turn, need to remain in Him. Baptism gives us the heart and mind of Christ; having been made a new creation with Our Savior’s way of seeing reality, we will come to know the truth as long as we remain in Him. The anointing teaches us because it endowed us with Jesus’ dwelling within us and giving us His heart; we will learn from Him if we continue to remain in Him.

This anointing and new heart reminds me of one of the most important passages of the prophet Jeremiah which is also quoted in Hebrews 8:8ff:
“Behold, the days are coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant which I made with their fathers when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant which they broke, though I was their husband, says the LORD. But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it upon their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each man teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the LORD; for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more” (Jeremiah 31:31-34).

The key ideas here are new covenant, God as our husband, the law within us on our hearts, our sins forgiven, and we shall all know God. When we enter into the new covenant at our baptism, our sins are wiped away, and we receive a new heart of flesh that desires to please God, our divine spouse. The two shall become one flesh, says Genesis 2:24, and so you and I become one flesh with God, our Husband. The biblical sense of to “know” refers to sexual knowledge, and marriage is the symbol God created to reveal what He desires His relationship would be with us. He asks us: “Will you marry me?”

There is nothing sexual in our relationship with God, but it is most intimate. In baptism, God becomes our God, and we become His people. He becomes our Husband, and we become His bride. He becomes one flesh with us and gives us His very heart to replace our old stony one. With His heart beating within us, with Him dwelling within us, with His mind and will becoming our mind and will, we intimately come to know the Lord.

He asks us at our creation, “Will you marry me?” We take a huge step in our relationship with Him at our baptism. Baptism is our saying yes to God’s question and is our marriage to Him. At our baptism, we are married to God. We renew that commitment with every Holy Communion. Every Communion is like every renewal of the marriage covenant when the husband gives his body to his bride. At Communion we receive the body of our Husband so that we can bear good fruit. If we give ourselves fully to Jesus, and that means pleasing Him in all we think, say and do, He will be able to give Himself fully to us so that we may have life to the full and be full with His fruit.


Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.
All rights reserved.

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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