ARE YOU CIRCUMCISED?

Tuesday of the 23rd Week in Ordinary Time
Col 2:6-15

Why is there so much fuss about circumcision among the Jews? In Gen 17:10-14, we read: “This is my covenant with you and your descendants after you, the covenant you are to keep: Every male among you shall be circumcised. You are to undergo circumcision, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and you. For the generations to come every male among you who is eight days old must be circumcised, including those born in your household or bought with money from a foreigner--those who are not your offspring. Whether born in your household or bought with your money, they must be circumcised. My covenant in your flesh is to be an everlasting covenant. Any uncircumcised male, who has not been circumcised in the flesh, will be cut off from his people; he has broken my covenant." Circumcision is the physical proof of belonging to the covenant of the Old Testament. To be uncircumcised is to be a gentile among the Jews. From the time of Abraham, our father in faith, God wrote His alliance with man not on a tablet of stone but on a skin made of human flesh. Thus, the great emphasis given by the Jews on circumcision. I remember my childhood days when we teased and laughed at peers who were yet uncircumcised. But we did not view circumcision from a religious perspective as the Jews do. For us, we simply took circumcision as a rite of passage from boyhood to manhood. Sometimes we even regarded it as a test of masculinity. Males who refused to be circumcised we called names like “sissy” and a “chicken”. Because circumcision has great religious significance for the Jews, the Jewish Christians in the early Church had an issue against the gentile converts who were uncircumcised. (It does not mean, however, that all gentiles are uncircumcised, as Jer 9:25 attests to). The truth is that the very first council convoked by the Church was in Jerusalem and, as the Acts of the Apostles narrates to us, is occasioned by the circumcision issue. Today, St. Paul writes the Colossians to remind them of the lesson they learned from that council. In the light of the new alliance between God and man in Christ, that is, the New Testament Covenant, circumcision of the heart is more important than circumcision of the flesh. This means that circumcision is not removing the foreskin as it is cleansing the heart from sin and living the life of Jesus. This consequently means that circumcision now applies not only to the male gender but even to the feminine. Circumcision now becomes for all – man and woman, slave or freeman, gentile or Jew – as long as he or she welcomes Jesus in his or her life and consecrates his or her heart to God. In the New Testament, God entered into a covenant not only with the Jews. In and through His Son, God established a new, definitive, and final alliance with all who belong to the Body of the Lord Jesus Christ, which is the Church. Pardon me, but just a reminder: Have you been circumcised yet?