The observance of an Octave celebration was an ancient Mediterranean custom afforded special holidays by expanding a single-day festival into an 8-day-long event.  Today’s  feast was at one time entitled the Circumcision of the Child Jesus explained succinctly in the final sentence of today’s Gospel lesson marking the 8^th day of the Christmas season or the Octave Day and the 8^th day since the birth of Jesus.  Circumcision was the Jewish ritual male mark of belonging to God’s covenant with the People of Israel (see Genesis 17).  The question of the necessity of circumcision for Church membership became controversial in the Apostolic Church (see Acts 15).  The early Church decided that not only was circumcision unnecessary, but also that the observance of the Torah (the Law of Moses) was much diminished for Christians of Gentile origins.  Some of the Torah’s moral values remained but generally evolved into a larger Law of Love.  The Mosaic Law itself lost most of it’s religious force as the Church’s Jewishness diminished and the Church’s Gentile cultural influences increased.  The feast’s title changed in the mid-20^th Century and today it is called MaryTheotokos (Greek for birth-giver of God, i.e., mother of God).  This title of Mary is considered her primary title and is a statement of faith which unites both the Catholic Western and the Orthodox Eastern Traditions of the One Church.  Any connection with the issue of circumcision is purely coincidental today.  The important point of today’s feast is that the Savior had a human mother which makes him fully human in addition to being God’s divine son.  We hold that he is both divine and human thanks to Mary’s cooperative acceptance of God’s generous love.

Today’s lesson from the Book of Numbers recalls the first ritual blessing ascribed to God for the new religious culture of the Israelites early in their mythic desert journey.  When God first engaged Abraham, and then Isaac and Jacob and the other Patriarchs, the Israelites were an ethnic culture very much resembling other tribal cultures of the era and locale.  Only with the rise of Moses and the reception of the Torah, did Israel become a full-fledged and unique religious culture, coterminus with Israel’s ethnicity.  The book’s somewhat off-putting title, Numbers, camouflages it’s profound message and purpose.  Numbers is one of the Torah, the Five Books of Moses (aka the Pentateuch), in which God’s real presence among the Chosen People was understood as a demonstration and proof of divine love for and active engagement with the Israelites.  The ancient Israelite sense of God’s true presence in the physical universe located it on the Mercy Seat, a space located directly above and resting upon the Ark of the Covenant.  The Ark itself was housed in a tent called the Tabernacle when the Israelites made camp on their Exodus pilgrimage through the Sinai Desert.  They continued to use  the Tabernacle tent even after they settled in the Promised Land and it was replaced by the Jerusalem temple built centuries after Moses in the days of King Solomon (ca 957 BC).  Thus, the ancient Hebrew texts and culture asserted that the God of Israel “tabernacles among his people.”  The strange verb, to tabernacle, asserted that God camped with and dwelt among the his beloved Chosen People.  Today’s blessing formula given by God to Moses for Aaron and his sons (the first priests of the Old Covenant) came from that new religious culture which valued the presence of God near to and intimate with the believers.  Also, the Second Commandment of the Decalogue (Exodus 20:7) forbad the casual human utterance of God’s Divine Name (see Exodus 3:13-15).  This was a sign of intimacy and respect: God had revealed the Divine Name (YHWH) to Moses allowing for (risking!) an intimate familiarity.  The ancient Israelites referred to God as “The Lord,” Adonai, to avoid pronouncing the Divine Name as a practice of respect (hence, the purpose of the 2^nd Commandment).  So, in the divinely authored blessing, the euphemism Adonai (“The Lord”) was used out of thankful reverence even as the Israelites “invoked” God upon themselves.  The ancient Israelites found their salvation partly in their ability to appeal to Adonai because of his nearness.  Today’s lesson reminds us that God’s presence within and among us in our real flesh-and-blood life events is what gives us that sense of a holy dignity within humanity which the Christmas-Epiphany Season describes as the Mystery of the Incarnation.

Writing to the Galatian Christians, Paul passionately argued against the assertion by some Jewish Christians that any Gentile who would embrace the Gospel message must first embrace the Law of Moses and become Jewish (for males, this included being circumcised).  Paul ultimately held that one’s status as Jew or Gentile was completely unimportant (as was whether one was male or female, or slave or free).  He argued that Jesus was both Son of God and human, and completely in accord with the Law of Moses, a Law, however, rendered no longer necessary by his Incarnation and Paschal Redemption.  The Law of Moses had been given to assist the Israelites by providing them a religious culture.  Membership in that culture was salvation from idolatry.  In Jesus Christ, salvation was redefined and through him it became available to all peoples.  The generosity (grace) of God, God’s adoption (redemption) of all believers through the Gospel message and ministry, and the enlivening power of the Holy Spirit in the believers’ hearts – these replaced the ancient Law.  Some Christians today still embrace the Decalogue as chief and fundamental for the New Covenant even as it was for the Old.  In fact, while the Old Covenant is still in force for the Jews, the New Covenant is founded not on the Torah, but on the Holy Spirit of God from Pentecost.  The Mystery of the Incarnation and the Paschal Mystery both together comprise the foundation of the Gospel of Jesus, the nearness and gift of God’s Presence, and the proximity and promise of God’s Kingdom.  As Paul would assert, we don’t need the Law to make us good or “justified.”  Rather we are “justified” by the saving presence and redemption of Jesus Christ, the Word Made Flesh, who was crucified, who died, and who rose from the dead, and by the Spirit of God, the Paraclete or Advocate who comes upon all believers!  We might respect the Decalogue by coincidence, but we are saved by Christ without the Law!

Finally, today’s Gospel lesson repeats that of the Christmas Mass at Dawn, the visitation by the Jewish shepherds.  The evangelist emphasized that, “Mary kept all these things, reflecting on them in her heart.”  Words very nearly the same as these were used when Luke concluded his account of the infancy and childhood of Jesus (see Luke 2:51).  Thus, Mary was no mere actor in this drama; she was a witness to the wonder of the Incarnation expressed by everyone from the Angel Gabriel, to the Jewish shepherds, to the prophetic temple personalities of Simeon and Anna, to the Gentile Magi in Matthew, and finally among the doctors of the Law in the Temple – all these episodes moved her to reflect on the ever-engaging and evolving mystery of God’s presence among humanity.  She was also, in all these events, a model through whom we are confronted with the mystery of Christ’s Real Presence in this season, in the liturgy, and in our own lives.  To embrace the Incarnation is to reflect on this mystery.  Being so thoughtful is in many ways a maternal task, one practiced by the true Mother of God.  So, how present is Christ to you?  How present are you to Christ?  How does your local parish herald the presence of Christ in the wider community?

And the Word was made flesh, and dwells among us . . . still!  Amen!

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