Feast of Circumcision of our Lord Jan. 14/1

Eight days after the great despotic feast of Nativity, the greatest of the feasts according to St. John Chrysostom, our Church celebrates another great feast, the Circumcision of Christ.

In the icon of the Holy Monastery of Panteleimon, Mt. Athos, the eight-day old according to His Mother, and beginning-less One according to His Father, Christ is depicted as an infant lying between the Most Holy Theotokos, Joseph and the priests of the temple to receive out of love and philanthropy for the human race not only the investiture of swaddling clothes, but also the circumcision of His flesh.

The reverence of the parents and the priests is evident in the icon. One of the priests holds open a book, suggesting the Law was God-given, and the other approaches Christ with a sharp object. The ceremony takes place in the temple, while in front of Christ is depicted St. Basil the Great, who is celebrated on the same day. He is attired in an elaborate phelonium as well as the vestments of a priest, together with an embroidered omophorion. A gold Gospel is in one hand, while he blesses with the other.

Circumcision was a presumption of Baptism that would be given by Christ's incarnation. Christ was the one who gave the Law in the Old Testament and He had to apply it to Himself. He did this in order to fulfill it and exceed it

Christ did not disdain the circumcision for the sake of philanthropy and love for mankind, as well as to show that He received a true human nature, and not as the Docetists claim that Jesus only appeared to have a body. Christ demonstrated with His circumcision that His Body was not consubstantial with divinity. The Body, having been deified by the divinity of the Logos, became identical with God but not of the same essence of God. This means that the Body of Christ is a source of the uncreated Grace of God but it does not have the same essence as the dvinity. (Metr. Hierotheos of Nafpaktos, The Despotic Feasts)

Hierodeacon Silouan Peponakis