A reading from the book of Numbers (6:22-27)
The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, ‘Speak to Aaron and his sons and say, “This is how you must bless the Israelites. You shall say:
May the Lord bless you and keep you.
May the Lord let his face shine on you and be gracious to you.
May the Lord show you his face and bring you peace.
‘ “This is how they must call down my name on the Israelites, and I shall bless them.” ’
The blessing to be given to the people by Aaron and the priests is punctuated with a triple reference to the divine ‘Lord’ (YHWH). In the first invocation the Lord is asked to ‘bless’ (barak) and ‘keep’ (shamar) them. In Genesis 1 God ‘blesses’ man and woman, and in Genesis 2 invites them to ‘keep’ the creation. The second and third invocations ask the Lord, as a sign of favour, to make his ‘face’ (panim) shine upon them, to ‘lift up’ his ‘face’ upon them, bringing them ‘grace’ (hen) and ‘peace’ (shalom). We begin the new year with this ancient formula of blessing.
Psalm 67 (66) The psalmist asks God to let his face shine ‘upon us’. God’s blessing will endure ‘till the ends of the earth revere him’.
A reading from the letter of saint Paul to the Galatians (4:4-7)
When the fullness of the time came, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born a subject of the Law, to redeem the subjects of the Law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. As you are sons, God has sent into our hearts the Spirit of his Son crying out, ‘Abba, Father’; and so you are no longer a slave, but a son; and if a son, then an heir, made so through God.
This unique allusion to the mother of the Son in Paul’s writings underlines once more the full humanity of Jesus, who, in the ‘fulness of time’ (to pleroma tou chronou) was ‘born of a woman’, and ‘born a subject of the Law’. But Paul points us to the new potential for humanity, that human beings are to be ‘redeemed’, their freedom bought back, so that they are no longer subject to the Law, but rather adopted as children of God. The human birth of the Son from a human mother enables the rebirth of his brothers and sisters as children of God. As sons and daughters we are able to receive the Spirit of the Son in our hearts, which cries out ’Abba Father with the confidence that our new relationship with the Father gives us, for we are ‘slaves no longer but sons and daughters’, and ‘heirs through God’. The role of Mary was to bestow humanity on the Son, so that he could bestow divinity on his brothers and sisters.
A reading from the holy gospel according to Luke (2:16-21)
The shepherds went in haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby lying in the manger. When they saw this, they made known what they had been told about this child, and everyone who heard it was astonished at what the shepherds said to them. But Mary treasured all these things and pondered them in her heart. And the shepherds went back glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, just as they had been told.
When the eight days were complete to circumcise the child, he was called Jesus, the name the angel had given him before he was conceived in the womb.
The gospel reading spans the octave of Christmas. On Christmas night the shepherds, as they had been told, went to visit the new-born child, and announced to all the astonishing birth. Mary however is silent, simply keeping ‘all these things’ (pemata) in her heart. At the end of the octave, on the eighth day, Jesus is circumcised according to Jewish custom, and named yeshua‘, as had been commanded by the angel to Mary and to Joseph, for he is the one who is to ‘save’ his people (Luke 1:31 Matthew 1:21).
Why was Jesus circumcised?
Mary suggests that our human response to Christ should be silence.