Cut It Out

 VIII Day of the Octave of Christmas & Feast of the Circumcision of our Lord
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  God, in calling Abram out of Ur in modern-day Iraq, said many amazing things to him.  We hear at the beginning of Genesis, chapter 12, that God tells Abram, “Go forth from your land, your relatives, and from your father’s house to a land that I will show you.”  That, in itself, took a giant leap of faith.  Abram was being asked to leave the fertile crescent, the birth-place of civilization, as scholars call it, for an unknown land inhabited by unknown, and possibly hostile, people.  It’s hard enough for us to pack up our entire life and move to a different place.  Imagine doing it without having a home to which you were going, not knowing exactly where God was going to settle you (and whom you might have to dislodge to stay there), and doing it at the age of 75 years old.

    God also promised Abram, “I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.”  Abram and Sarai (later Abraham and Sarah) were well past the childbearing years.  They had no children.  And yet God promised that he would make of them a great nation.  This must have seemed odd to them.  And yet Abram trusted in God to do the impossible.  This makes Abraham’s almost sacrifice of Isaac much later even more incredible.  God had finally given Abraham and Sarah a son, Isaac, and so perhaps they thought that becoming a great nation could actually happen.  But then God asks Abraham to sacrifice that son, that fulfillment of the promise, that promise of hope for the elderly couple.  And yet, Abraham is willing to do it (though God stays his hand at the last minute).
    Before that, in chapter 17, God appears to ninety-nine year-old Abram (who had conceived Ishmael with his slave, Hagar, but was still childless with Sarai), and says:
 

I am God the Almighty.  Walk in my presence and be blameless.  Between you and me I will establish a covenant, and I will multiple you exceedingly.  […] You are to become the father of a multitude of nations.  […] I will make you exceedingly fertile; I will make nations of you; kings will stem from you.  […] I will give to you and to your descendants after you the land in which you are now residing as aliens, the whole land of Canaan, as a permanent possession; and I will be their God.  […] This is the covenant between me and you and your descendants after you that you must keep: every male among you shall be circumcised.  Circumcise the flesh of your foreskin.  That will be the sign of the covenant between me and you.

Luckily, Abraham was open to God’s will.  Because, put in his place, I think most men would have said, “You want me to do what?  To my what?”  
    And yet this was the sign of those who believed in and followed God.  And this sign of the covenant endured even to the time of our Lord, who, though He was the Lord of the covenant, was still joined to Israel by His Mother, the Blessed Virgin Mary, and His foster-father, St. Joseph, in a powerful way that united Christ to Israel as the People who belonged to God, the sons and daughters of Abraham.  Even for those who needed to be joined to Israel, this was a difficult sign.  Indeed, when the Bible talks about God-fearers, it speaks about those who wanted to become Jewish, but who had some issue preventing them from joining.  One can imagine that the thought of circumcision kept any number of adult men converts from becoming fully Jewish and part of the covenant.  God our Savior, who had no need to become part of the covenant, still underwent this sign.
    But the sign had a spiritual meaning in addition to the physical act.  The prophet Jeremiah prophesies: “Be circumcised for the Lord, remove the foreskins of your hearts, people of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem; Or else my anger will break out like fire, and burn so that no one can quench it, because of your evil deeds.”  Circumcision was a physical cutting away.  But God also intended it to be a spiritual cutting away of all that was fallen and of disobedience to God.  The covenant was not only to be part of one’s flesh, but also part of one’s heart, spirit, and soul.  
    Christ Himself, while He was subjected to the covenant as an infant, Himself established a new covenant in His Precious Blood, and a new sign of the covenant was given that had both a physical and a spiritual aspect.  That new sign was baptism.  The water washed one clean of original sin, but it also meant a washing away of all that is fallen from that point on.  It made men and women part of the new Israel, the Church, gathered from all the nations, as a people who belong to the Lord.  
    But think of the humility that Christ underwent in being circumcised!  He who is Lord of the Sabbath is certainly also Lord of the Covenant, and so is not bound to it.  But He allows the cutting of His flesh in anticipation of giving His flesh for the life of the world in His Passion.  He subjects Himself to the Law, though He is the Lawgiver.  And He does the same in His baptism in the Jordan, as John baptizes Christ, though John asks to be baptized by Christ.  
    This is a great model for us when it comes to humility.  How often do we bristle when we have to do something that we don’t think we should have to do?  How quick do we make known our importance, and how we think things should go?  But this is not the example of our Savior.  Like Abraham, Christ, the Son of Abraham, trusted in His heavenly Father, and went where the Father told Him to go, did what the Father told Him to do, and said what the Father told Him to say.  “Like a lamb,” Isaiah prophesied, “he was led to the slaughter, and he opened not his mouth.”  Yet, if we bear one unrighteous punishment, how quickly do we open our mouths to protest our own innocence?
    God does not call us to be doormats, but on the other hand, sometimes He allows the just to suffer unjustly for their own sanctity, their own growth in holiness.  The day after Christmas we celebrated St. Stephen, who was martyred though his only crime was to witness to the fact that Christ was the long-awaited Messiah.  The day after that we celebrated St. John, who, while not a martyr, was exiled to Patmos as a Roman punishment for following Christ; the day after that we celebrated the Holy Innocents, who could not even confess Christ with their lips, though they took His place with their deaths; the day after that we commemorated St. Thomas Beckett, who died at the hands of King Henry II for standing up for the rights of the Church.  These past days of the Octave haven been filled with witnesses who suffered unjustly.  Their witness should spur us on when we have to undergo sufferings much lighter than theirs.  

    I would also add Pope Benedict XVI to those who suffered unjustly, but utilized it for his own holiness.  He was often attacked in the media, was called “God’s Rottweiler,” despite his gentle and humble disposition, and suffered other attacks, simply for holding true to the unchanging teachings of the Church.  Yet I never remember him complaining once about those slings and arrows.
    God promised Abraham that he would become the father of kings and many nations.  Abraham remained faithful to God, even in hard times, even when the sign of that covenant meant the stripping away of flesh.  Christ subjected Himself to the Law, and paid the penalty for our sins, though He Himself was the Lawgiver and free from all sin.  What witness will we give through the new circumcision of the heart, holy baptism, by which we become united to God: the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.