Why Christ was circumcised—and who performed the rite
The first shedding of Christ’s precious blood in his circumcision marked the beginning of the fulfilment of the old covenant.
The first shedding of Christ’s precious blood in his circumcision marked the beginning of the fulfilment of the old covenant.
In this passage, Fr. Coleridge tells us:
Where the Circumcision of Christ may have happened—and who it was who may have wielded the knife
How it marked the first shedding of His Precious Blood, a deliberate act of obedience and sacrifice that began His earthly mission to redeem mankind.
Why the rite held deep significance for Mary and Joseph, as their understanding of its spiritual import intensified their sorrow and joy at this first mystery of the Precious Blood.
He explains how the Circumcision was the first seal of Christ’s mission, fulfilling the old covenant and pointing toward the new life of grace He would bring through His Sacrifice.
The Circumcision
The Thirty Years—Our Lord’s Infancy & Hidden Life
Ch. VII, pp 81-90. 1885
Burns and Oates, London (1915 edition). Headings and some line breaks added.
Place of the Circumcision
The days flowed on, in intense happiness and also in intense silence and calm, and after the visit of the holy Shepherds and their humble offerings, we are left to imagine the incidents of this blessed time.
We learn from the language of St. Matthew, that when the holy Kings from the East came to pay their homage to our Lord in the arms of His Mother, they found Him and her in a “house.” If there were not so many good reasons for thinking that, if the visit of the Kings took place at the time of year at which it is commonly commemorated in the Church, it must in that case have been after the lapse of a year, if not more, from the time of our Lord’s Birth, we might infer from this hint of St. Matthew that the Holy Family removed into some humble dwelling in the town of Bethlehem very soon after the Nativity.
But we can draw no conclusive argument from the fact that they were in a house at the Epiphany, to prove that they were in a house at the time of the Circumcision, on account of the reasons just referred to, of which we shall have to say more in a future chapter. But it appears very probable that the cave of the Nativity was not the home of our Lady and the Blessed Child for any great length of time.
It must have been a place where they would be in the way of many curious visitors, sent to them, probably, by the reports which were spread about after the visit of the Shepherds. It is expressly said that the Shepherds talked about their visit, “and all that heard wondered, and at those things that were told them by the Shepherds.”
It would be natural that after a short interval it would be possible for St. Joseph to find some quiet place of abode less in the way of the public, and that he removed our Lady and her Child thither as soon as could be.
The Sacred Rite
It was therefore, as it seems, in some house or cottage at Bethlehem—unless the cave itself of the Nativity had a house adjoining it, as was the case in the Holy House at Nazareth—that the sacred rite of the Circumcision of our Lord was performed on the “eighth day” after His Birth.
Circumcision, as our Lord said to the Jews, was not of Moses, but of the Fathers. It was a part of the Patriarchal Dispensation, the test and condition of the covenant of God with Abraham. It was anterior to the Law, the Tabernacle, the Temple, the Synagogue.
We do not read anywhere of a rule which enjoined that it should be performed in any holy place, and it seems clear from the account given in St. Luke of the naming of St. John Baptist, that the whole rite was in that case performed in the house of Zachary. It remains altogether uncertain whether it was performed, as seems usually to have been done, by the father, that is by St. Joseph, or by some minister of the synagogue, a Levite, or some other person. Zachary himself did not circumcise St. John, as it seems, for he was appealed to to settle the question about the name of his son.
Christian contemplatives delight in the thought that it was the office of St. Joseph to perform this rite on our Lord, and that he and our Lady together gave Him the holy name of Jesus, “which,” as St. Luke says, probably as the mouthpiece of our Lady herself, “which was so called by the Angel, before He was conceived in the womb.”
Circumcision given to Abraham—its effects and symbolism
Circumcision had been given to Abraham as a sign of the covenant made with him by God. The Fathers tell us that it cancelled original sin, and thus opened the gates of Heaven to the faithful, making them so far partakers by anticipation of the Redemption which was to be wrought by means of the Sacrifice on the Cross, though they could not enter Heaven until that Sacrifice had been offered.
Thus the “regeneration” which had been available under the primitive dispensation, by virtue of some sacrifice or act of faith, was secured to the descendants of Abraham by the rite of Circumcision. It was thus an acknowledgment at once of original sin and of the efficacy of the redemption by the Precious Blood. It was a mark of the descendants of Abraham, and of that faith in the promises made to him which had won so magnificent a reward from God.
But all its efficacy was derived from faith, and that it had no sacramental power of its own like that of Christian Baptism, might have been seen in the fact that the females of the chosen people inherited the blessing which it conveyed, though it was not administered to them personally.
It had many other significations, for it was a symbol of the Christian and interior mortification which our Lord was to introduce and make obligatory. It embodied the principle of chastity, and the like.
In any case it was for those who lay under the ban of original sin, for those who needed regeneration, for those who had to be elevated and cleansed before they could enter Heaven, for those who were in need of adoption to make them the sons of God. It implied also, as St. Paul teaches, the obligation to keep the whole Mosaic Law, in which it had been preserved and continued as the rite of admission to the covenant of God.
Our Lord’s reception of it, therefore, was the formal sign that He was, as the same Apostle says, “made under the Law,” as well as “born of a woman,” and thus able, in the counsels of God, to redeem those that were under the Law, that we might receive “the adoption of sons” through Him.
Reasons why our Lord should be circumcised
These few words may suffice as pointing out the Divine reasons why the Redeemer of the world was to be circumcised. He came to redeem all mankind, and it was fitting that He should take up and ratify and give life to, in His own Person, all the conditions and dispensations under which the efficacy of His Redemption had been administered before He came.
God always required faith as a condition of being pleasing to Him, and the human race started from Paradise with the revelation of a future Redeemer, the Seed of the Woman, on which its faith had to fasten, and by which it was to live in hope, reconciled to its God. The Sacrifice on the Cross was the fulfilment of this original promise, and it gave efficacy to all the acts of faith and sacrifice and penitence by which it had been applied to souls under any dispensation.
As Circumcision had been chosen as the sign and seal of the covenant with Abraham, our Lord was circumcised, and thereby gave to the rite the efficacy which had been assigned to it. His Circumcision fulfilled and gave power to all the circumcisions which had been administered under the covenant with Abraham, and then took away the rite once for all, the regenerating power with which it had once been connected being transferred to the new Christian Sacrament of Baptism when our Lord was Himself baptized.
So also our Lord fulfilled and then took away the Law, bearing, as St. Paul says, the curse threatened on those who disobeyed it, by dying the death on the tree to which the curse was attached.
Fulfilment of the Law
In all these things we see, in the first instance, how our Lord was not bound to these observances and rites, as being Himself the Lawgiver, and as having in Himself no vestige of the conditions for the remedy of which they were ordained.
And we see, in the second place, how a higher necessity, as it were, bound Him to their fulfilment, because all their value was derived from Him in the past, and because He was to fulfil them in order to take away their obligation on others for the future. The Jews, who lived and died in covenant with God, by virtue of these ordinances, received all the benefits which they administered, because He was to touch them.
They do not bind on the children of the New Covenant, because their obligation has been fulfilled and taken away by His having touched them, and because He has enshrined the efficacy of His Precious Blood in other ordinances which have taken their place with new, far greater, and inherent powers.
Importance of the mystery
Thus the Circumcision of our Lord was a mystery, very different indeed in its import and efficacy from the circumcision of an ordinary descendant of Abraham.
And, when we ask ourselves as to the intelligence of this Divine mystery which may have been possessed by our Blessed Lady and St. Joseph at the time, we cannot fail to see that it must have been very great and penetrating indeed. We cannot suppose that two persons so highly trusted by God with the execution of His designs for the redemption of the world, were ignorant of the truths which related to the Divine Person of the Incarnate Son.
They knew Who the Messias was to be, they knew that the Child in the womb and in the cradle was the Eternal God. Yet in this simple personal truth the whole doctrine of the details, so to speak, of Redemption, was contained. The Incarnate God could not need Circumcision for Himself, He could not have in Him any of the stains or disabilities which were removed by Circumcision, and He could not but be in His own Person the one fountain of cleansing, redemption, elevation, sanctification to others.
To say this is to say that the blessed pair who knelt by our Lord in His Infancy must have understood how it belonged to the office of Redeemer to submit to Circumcision, as to other legal obligations which followed upon it in due course of time. And we may gather from the words of St. Luke, twice repeated, that “His Mother kept all these things in her heart,” that the intelligence which she, and therefore in all probability St. Joseph, possessed, was not so much flashed into their souls by direct revelation, as fostered by the silent quiet process of thoughtful musing on the words and acts of God.
Shedding of the Precious Blood
There are two things connected with the mystery of the Circumcision on which Catholic contemplatives may love to dwell.
The first of these is the fact that the sacred rite which was now performed was in itself very painful, and that it involved the first shedding of the Precious Blood which was afterwards to be poured out upon the Cross.
The second is that, according to the universal custom, the Child received His Name from His parents at this time, and that the Name which was received was no other than the holy name of Jesus. A few words may be said on each of these subjects.
The first shedding of the Precious Blood of our Lord could not but touch most tenderly the hearts of His Blessed Mother and St. Joseph. It would have been so in the case of any infant, and of any parents who loved their child.
But in the case of our Blessed Lady and St. Joseph, as well as of our Lord, there were circumstances altogether peculiar and unparalleled. In the first place, our Lord was already in full possession of all His mental faculties. His intelligence, His will, and the rest, could never for a single moment have been in that state of half germinal existence which is common in children. This would make the first shedding of His Blood more painful to Him than to others on account of His perfect consciousness.
But, much more than that, this bloodshedding was, on His part, as perfectly a deliberate and free act, as were afterwards that in the Garden, and that in the Praetorium, and that on the Cross. He must have shed this Blood willingly, He must have shed it deliberately, He must have shed it with all the most perfect affections of obedience to the Eternal Father, of love in the sacrifice which He was making, of desire for the salvation of mankind in general, of joy in the fruits of that particular pouring forth of His Blood in the souls of men, in all the blessings which His submitting Himself to that holy rite would involve for those for whom He underwent it.
He now began to merit, so to say, the fruits of His office of Saviour, and this could not have been so without the unrolling of all the immense range of those fruits before His mind and Heart. Nor would it be hidden from Him, on the other hand, in how many cases all that He was suffering and all that He was to suffer would be undergone in vain.
Significance of the Circumcision
In the second place, if we are to seek to enter, on this first mystery of the Precious Blood, into the hearts of Mary and Joseph, we find that the natural tenderness by which they would be touched at the sight of this innocent Blood must have been heightened and intensified in a most marvellous manner by the large extent of their intelligence of the true meanings and bearings of the mystery.
The drops of Blood which were then poured out, were not to them the simple marks of natural suffering, caused by the rite on which God had insisted, perhaps, for this very reason, that He might stamp on this initiation of the race of Abraham into covenant with Himself, some mark of the truth that without shedding of blood there is no remission.
Our Lord’s Mother and her holy Spouse must have well understood the prophecies, and they must have known that the Child was come, not only to save, but to save at the cost of His own Blood. To them He was already the Lamb of God, the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. And so the precious drops were to them not simply His Blood, but His Blood to be shed as the ransom of men.
They must have seen in them the first-fruits of that most painful and most efficacious Sacrifice which was to be consummated on the Cross.
Moral signification
Moreover, there were moral and spiritual significations connected with the Circumcision of our Lord, which must have been present at the time both to His own mind and to the minds of Mary and Joseph.
Our Lord came to change what one of the Fathers calls a lesser circumcision into a greater circumcision. That is, He came to fulfil and to set aside the carnal circumcision to which He submitted, in order to introduce the true Christian circumcision of the heart, the spirit, the whole man, interior as well as exterior. St. Paul speaks of this in his Epistle to the Colossians, to whom he says, alluding to some false doctrines which were current in their part of the world at that time…
“… that in our Lord they are filled, Who is the head of all principality and power…”
… and then he adds, referring to other heresies by which they were assailed…
“…in Whom also ye are circumcised, with circumcision not made by hand in despoiling of the body of the flesh, but in the circumcision of Christ, buried with Him in Baptism, in Whom also you are risen again by the faith of the operation of God, Who hath raised Him up from the dead.”1
He has the same thought as to the obligation of Baptism, in the Epistle to the Romans, where He says,
“We that are dead to sin, how shall we live any longer therein? Know ye not, that we all, who are baptized in Christ Jesus, are baptized in His death? For we are buried together with Him by Baptism into death, that as Christ is risen from the dead by the glory of His Father, so we also may walk in newness of life.”2
This newness of life is received by the spiritual circumcision which our Lord came to introduce. It was represented by the external ceremony to which our Lord submitted.
It involved the perfect accomplishment of the Law, in the fulfilment of the precepts of the love of God and of the love of our neighbour. It implied the painful conquest of the appetites and concupiscences of the old man, and in this it was well prefigured by the actual cutting of the flesh, and by the flow of blood, while at the same time the feeble wills and degenerate instincts of humanity were fortified and endowed with heavenly powers by the grace purchased by the Precious Blood.
The interior crucifixion was represented, with all its blessed fruits of perfection and holiness, by the same rite which foreshadowed that Sacrifice of the Cross, by means of which were to be obtained the abundant graces which were needed for that Crucifixion.
From Fr Henry James Coleridge, The Thirty Years, Our Lord’s Infancy & Hidden Life, ‘The Circumcision’, published 1885, this edition Burns and Oates, London, 1915, pp 81-90
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Coloss. ii. 11
Romans vi. 2–4.
Would welcome an article on sabbath/Lord's Day vs literal day 7. On 'yom rishon' (day 8 (literal "first day") and interesting in Genesis there is no "first day (ordinal)" of creation but "one day"), our Lord was circumcised, rose from the dead. I have family members who have completely 'judaized', and keep Saturday as the sabbath/rest instead of the Lord's Day, insisting on the perpetual literalness of 'the 7th day' rather than 'six days you shall work, in the 7th 'sabbath/rest'. The Didiche as well as Mark 2:27, Romans 14:5-6, Acts 20:7, Colossians 2:16, Galations 4:9-10, are proofs on the new sabbath, but they can't be convinced. Subsequently along with Jewish sabbath they have adopted the Jewish view of divorce and a sort of Noahide 'neo-religious indifferentism'.