What was the purpose of circumcision – and who circumcised Jesus?
Why did the sinless Infant submit to a rite designed to cancel original sin and bind men to the Mosaic Law?
Why did the sinless Infant submit to a rite designed to cancel original sin and bind men to the Mosaic Law?
Editor’s Notes
In this passage, Fr. Coleridge tells us:
How the Holy Family likely moved from the Nativity cave to private lodgings before performing the ancient rite
That the purpose of Circumcision was to cancel original sin, through an anticipated participation in Christ’s future Redemption
Why Our Lord’s submission to this rite signified His being “made under the Law” to redeem humanity and grant adoption as God’s sons.
He shows us that the Incarnate Word humbled Himself to receive a remedy for sin He did not need, and fulfilled the Law’s demands so that we might receive what the patriarchs had anticipated through faith.
For more context, see Part I.
The Circumcision
The Thirty Years – Our Lord’s Infancy & Hidden Life
Chapter VII
St. Luke ii. 21; Vita Vite Nostræ, § 10.
Burns and Oates, London 1885 (1915 edition).
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.
These few words may suffice as pointing out the Divine reasons why the Redeemer of the world was to be circumcised.
The Circumcision
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