Save as PDFIn the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit!
On January 14, the Orthodox Church solemnly observes the Circumcision of the Lord in memory that the infant Christ on the eight day of His Nativity according to the Old Testament tradition was circumcised and named Jesus.
Many ancient people had circumcision as initiation ceremony to God. In Jewish understanding blood is sacred as “blood is a soul”, blood flowing out of the organ giving life means initiation to God of life taken as a gift. For Israelite this ceremony began to signify the covenant of the chosen people with God and had to remind the people of the obligations resulted from it.
According to the commentaries of the Church Fathers Christ took circumcision to be an example for people how to maintain the Divine canons and so that afterwards nobody could doubt that he was the veritable Man but not a ghost as later heretics-Docetists asserted.
In the New Testament the ceremony of circumcision gave up to the sacrament of baptism. And the holiday of the Circumcision of the Lord reminds Christians that they have made a new Covenant with God and “have been circumcised, with a circumcision made without hands, in the removal of the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ”.
The holiday of the Circumcision of the Lord lasts only a day and coincides with commemoration of Saint Basil the Great, archbishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia, who lived in the 4th century and is one of the most famous church writers and theologians and is also the author of the Divine Liturgy which we serve today. Unfortunately, all prayers of the Liturgy which in the first centuries the priest pronounced aloud are now read quietly and called secret, therefore except two phrases during the Eucharistic Canon the congregation can’t hear the difference between the Liturgy of Saint John Chrysostom which was usually serve and the Liturgy of Saint Basil the Great which is served only several times a year. But these are unusually God-inspired and poetically beautiful texts.
And as the Russian Orthodox Church observes all these events according to the Julian calendar, today we celebrate the New Year, as according to the old style today is the first of January. Congratulate you all, dear brothers and sisters with the beginning of the New Year and wish all of you the help of God through prayers of Saint Basil the Great and all saints. Amen.