By Water & Blood

Homily 8.4: Circumcision on the eighth day

But meanwhile, she who has borne a male: on the eighth day the one who was born is circumcised, and she becomes clean. It is quite a laborious matter, in this shortness of time, to touch on these things one by one; yet, so that we may say something in passing, this week can be seen as the time of the present life. For the world was completed in a week of days. In it, as long as we are placed in the flesh, we cannot be wholly pure, unless the eighth day comes, that is, unless the time of the age to come arrives. Yet on that day he who is male, and has acted manfully, is purified at once at the very coming of the age to come, and at once the mother who bore him is made clean. For she will receive back in the resurrection a flesh purified of vices. But if he had nothing manly in himself against sin, but was slack and effeminate in his actions, whose sin is such as is not forgiven either in the present age or in the one to come, he passes through one week and another in his uncleanness, and only when the third week begins to dawn is he purified from the uncleanness which she contracted by bearing a female. The victims which are commanded to be offered for such uncleanness are distinguished in two ways. First a lamb of a year old without blemish is commanded to be offered as a burnt offering, and a young pigeon or a turtledove for sin. But a second victim is commanded: “If,” it says, “her hand does not find what suffices for a lamb, let her take two turtledoves or two young pigeons, one for a burnt offering and the other for sin.” Hence it seems remarkable that the offering of Mary had not the first victim, that is, a lamb of a year old, but the second; as one whose hand did not suffice for the first. For so it is written of her: “His parents came,” it says, “to offer a victim for him, according to what is written in the law of the Lord, a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons.” But in this too it is shown that what is written is true, that Christ Jesus, though he was rich, became poor for our sakes. Therefore, then, he chose a poor mother of whom to be born, and a poor homeland, of which it is said: “And you, Bethlehem, are least among the thousands of Judah,” and the rest. But we are forced to run through these things briefly, and not to discuss each thing that is written, since indeed we are hastening to treat something also of the laws of leprosy which have been read.