CHRISTMASTIDE · 1 JANUARY
The Circumcision of Christ & the Holy Name of Jesus
Principal Feast · The First Act of the Incarnate Life · The Octave of Christmas
Circumcision — ser-kum-SIZ-yun · Nomen Sacrum — NOH-men SAK-rum · Yeshua — yeh-SHOO-ah · Iesous — ee-ay-SOOS · Philippians 2:9–11
O Lord Jesus Christ, who on the eighth day didst enter into the covenant of thy people and receive the Name that is above every name; Grant that we, who bear that Name in our baptism, may live worthy of the grace it contains, and may call upon it in every need, knowing that at the Name of Jesus every knee shall bow; who livest and reignest with the Father and the Holy Ghost, one God, world without end.
On the eighth day — the day after the Sabbath, the day of resurrection and new creation, the day that the ancient Church made its own as the Lord’s Day — the child born in Bethlehem was circumcised according to the Law of Moses, and received the Name that the angel Gabriel had given before his conception in the womb of Mary. Thou shalt call his name Jesus — Yeshua (yeh-SHOO-ah) in Hebrew, Iesous (ee-ay-SOOS) in Greek, the name that means the Lord saves — the name that is the whole Gospel in a single word. The feast of the Circumcision on 1 January stands at the octave of Christmas — the eighth day completing and crowning the week of the Nativity — and it holds together two mysteries that belong inseparably together: the entry of the incarnate Son of God into the covenant of Israel, and the giving of the Name that will be the instrument of salvation for every nation. Both are acts of obedience. The Circumcision fulfils the Law that he came not to abolish but to complete; the Name fulfils the promise that he came to accomplish. The whole of the Gospel is contained in the event of this eighth day: God made man keeps the Law of God, receives the Name of God’s own saving action, and begins the life that will end on a cross and begin again on another eighth day, the day of resurrection.
The liturgical significance of placing this feast on 1 January is immense. The Church begins its civic year — the year the world uses — by naming the Name. Not with resolutions or ambitions or the noise of celebration, but with the Name of Jesus: the most concentrated theological statement possible, a single word that contains the whole of revelation. Paul writes in the letter to the Philippians that God has given him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. The Circumcision feast puts this cosmic proclamation at the threshold of the calendar year: before any other business is done, the Name is invoked, the covenant is acknowledged, the Law is fulfilled. The Church that begins its year with the Holy Name begins it with a theological act that defines everything that follows. The Anglican tradition, which sings the Gloria and prays the Collect of the Circumcision on this day, is participating in an act of naming that has been performed in the Church since the second century: the year begins with the Name, as every prayer begins, as every sacrament is administered, as every blessing is given.
The Circumcision is also, in the ancient devotional tradition, the first shedding of the blood of Christ. Before the Garden of Gethsemane, before the scourging, before the crown of thorns, before the nails — the first drops of the blood that will be poured out on Calvary are shed on the eighth day, in the ordinary fulfilment of the ordinary Law. Devotional tradition has meditated on this point with an intensity that the modern Church has largely forgotten: that the Passion does not begin in Holy Week but on the eighth day after Christmas, that the obedience of Christ to the Law is the first movement of the same obedience that will carry him to the cross. The infant who sheds his first blood in circumcision is the same man who will shed his last blood in the piercing of his side, and the Name given on the eighth day is the Name invoked in the first cry from Calvary: My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? The Circumcision feast is not a minor observance attached to a January holiday; it is the first station of the cross, placed at the beginning of the year so that the whole year may be lived under the sign of what it begins to disclose.
The Holy Name of Jesus is not merely a title but a theological reality — the compressed statement of everything that the Incarnation means and everything that the Atonement accomplishes. In the ancient world, as in the Hebrew tradition from which Christianity springs, the name does not merely identify but participates in the reality it names. To invoke the Name of Jesus is not to use a label but to call upon the Person — the eternal Son of God incarnate, the risen Lord, the one in whom all the fullness of the Godhead dwells bodily. This is why the Name is at the centre of all Christian prayer: every collect ends through Jesus Christ our Lord, every blessing is given in the Name, every baptism is performed in the threefold Name that includes his. The feast of the Circumcision and Holy Name on 1 January sets this reality at the beginning of all things: the year begins with the acknowledgment that the Name is Lord, that the one born eight days ago in a stable in Bethlehem is the one at whose Name every knee shall bow, and that the covenant sealed in his blood on this eighth day is the covenant that holds the whole of time together.
Almighty God, who didst give thine only Son to take our nature upon him, and to be circumcised on the eighth day as the fulfilling of the Law; Grant that we, bearing his Name in our baptism and invoking it in our prayers, may live within the covenant his obedience sealed and his blood ratified, until the day when every tongue confesses that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father; who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, one God, world without end.
Amen.