Fr. Gabriel, Divine Intimacy:
This feast [the Circumcision] coincides with the beginning of the civil year; the first drops of Jesus blood seal and consecrate each new year, making it really the “annus Domine” the year of our Lord, which it actually is, since time belongs to God. Our life too is God’s; it has been redeemed and sanctified by the Blood of Christ.
Let us, then, begin the year by circumcising our hearts, for as Saint Ambrose says, “He who has been circumcised of every vice will be judged worthy of the Lord’s attention… See how all the events which followed one another in the Old Testament prefigured what was to happen later, for the circumcision also represents purification from sins.”
A new year, a new life! A new life indeed – for if we circumcised in ourselves the “old man” with his vices and passions, the Christian can grow in us; we can become new creatures, purified by the Blood of Christ, vivified and nourished by his grace, so that it may no longer be we who live, but Christ who lives in us.
The new year which begins today will acquire value only if it is lived in this light. Only by this daily circumcision of the heart will grace triumph in us, thus making the Christ-life an ever increasing reality in our souls.
Fr. Hamon, Meditations for All the Days of the Year:
The mystery of the Circumcision preaches to us the sacrifice of our attachments, that sacrifice which St. Paul calls the circumcision of the heart, and which is the great object of Christian morals. This circumcision of the heart has been substituted by the Gospel for the circumcision of the flesh. It consists in the retrenchment of all the ties which draw us towards the earth, towards the flesh and the senses; towards that egotistical self, the monstrous mixture of self-love and its caprices, of the temper and its brusqueness, of the character and its fits of anger, of idleness and its negligence. It is in this that true virtue consists, much more than in exercises of piety and frequentation of the sacraments. As good and holy things as they are, they are only means for attracting grace - the grace which gives us courage to take in our hands the knife of mortification, to make the incision down to the quick, into the bad strata which all of us bear within ourselves.
Dom Prosper Gueranger, The Liturgical Year:
“And now, what shall we give in return to this Saviour of our souls for the Circumcision which he has deigned to suffer in order to show us how much he loved us? We must, according to the teaching of the Apostle, circumcise our heart from all its evil affections, its sins and its wicked inclinations; we must begin at once to live that new life of which the Infant Jesus is the sublime model. Let us thus show him our compassion for this his earliest suffering for us, and be more attentive than we have hitherto been to the example he sets us.”
A Father of the Society of Jesus, Practical Meditations for Every Day of the Year:
The Feast of this day was instituted in memory of our Lord's voluntary submission to cir-cumcision. Then He began His office of Mediator, and took on Him the tokens, the sufferings, and the debt of sin; He offered Himself as a victim of expiation; and shed His blood for the first time. Besides offering up Himself as an oblation of infinite price, He consecrated His whole self, and every instant of His mortal life, to our service. How great was this love of God for men!
Let us give back our love for His love. We enter to-day on a new year; let us consecrate the beginning of it to that God who has so loved us, and let this consecration be so entire that every day and every minute shall be employed in His service, and to His greater glory. We will offer to Him also our soul and body, and be ready to shed the last drop of our blood in proof of our fidelity and our love.
The blood that Jesus shed for us in the circumcision is the blood of the New Covenant, san-guis novi Testamenti; a covenant which ought to renew the face of the earth by causing reality to succeed to figures, the liberty of the divine adoption to slavery, the law of charity to the law of fear, which characterized the old Covenant.
Let us profit by the circumstance of the new-beginning year, and of the wonderful renewal wrought in the world by the great mystery of this day, to renew in our hearts an increase of fervour and of generosity in the service of God. May this year be a year of fervour and progress! It will pass rapidly, like that which has just ended. If God gives us the grace to see its end, how glad and happy we shall be to have passed it holily!
This is very beautiful. I’m a bit sad that we no longer have this Feast Day (is it only still celebrated in the TLM- I can’t usually get to it very easily). Growing up, I wondered for years why we celebrated the Circumcision of Our Lord. As my faith grew and I finally read what it all meant, I was in awe. His first drops of Blood shed.