BEHOLD I STAND AT THE DOOR AND KNOCK

A SERMON FOR THE FEAST OF CIRCUMCISION

A very Happy New Year to everyone this morning.  We’re all very aware today that at midnight last night we passed through the doorway from one year to another.  Many of us did so with great ceremony, the drinking of champagne, the singing of Auld lang syne, and a big glass ball dropping a few feet in Time Square.  What great importance we attach to the simple fact that as of today, we have to write 2018 on our checks instead of 2017.  Surely there must be something more significant to the New Year than that?  Let’s examine that doorway we passed through at midnight.  Like all doorways, there is something in front of the door, and something behind it.  Often it’s two separate rooms, containing totally separate furniture, and for totally separate functions.  The door might separate a bedroom from a bathroom for example, or the inside of the house from the garden.  Our door last night separates an old year from a new one.  It is our annual reminder that the past is separated from the future.  Two totally separate periods of time, one that was, and one that will be.

At any instant of our life, we could make this separation between past and future.  The doorway we pass through to get from one to the other is called the present.  And the present is the most important of all.  The New Year is a time when we stand at that doorway from past to future, with our hand on the doorknob, baggage in hand, closing the door behind us on 2017, and looking out into 2018.  Now it’s up to each of us what we want to pack and take with us in our baggage from one side of that door to the other.  Some things are best left behind.  Let us leave behind those memories best forgotten, those grudges we hold towards certain people, those sins we committed, and most importantly our attachments to anything that takes us away from God.  But let’s make sure we have packed those virtues we have been cultivating, those good habits that draw us ever closer to a greater love from our divine Saviour who on this day of his Circumcision shed his very first drop of Blood for us. 

There’s really not much more we need to pack.  Perhaps a few good memories we want to cherish, certainly the lessons we learned about avoiding temptations and occasions of sin.  But our bags don’t have to be all that full, and in most cases we can resolve to start over again from scratch.  We can begin our new year with some firm resolutions, promising ourselves to be better in one way or another.  We can start by making resolutions on the natural level, whether it be studying harder, stopping smoking, losing weight, gaining weight, whatever it might be.  By all means make these promises to yourself, try to keep them, use this New Year as a time to say goodbye to the old You of 2017, and welcome in the new, improved You of 2018.  Whether you will succeed or fail, God only knows, but whatever happens, you may be assured that this same God will be there to help you on the way if you ask him. 

But above all, we should make spiritual acts of resolution according to our abilities and state of life.  Take the time to really examine your conscience at this doorway between the two years.  The word January comes from the name of a Roman god called Janus.  Janus is represented as having two faces, one looking back and the other looking forward. We can learn from this representation of a pagan god, and make this new month of January a time for looking back at our past faults and a time for looking forward with resolutions to know, love and serve God better.

One of the ways God helps us do this is to give us the examples of his own life in the gospels of the daily Mass, and of course the examples also of his holy saints, whose feastdays we celebrate almost every day of the year.  We can learn by them, learn to emulate their virtues and good deeds, learn to follow in their footsteps as they themselves followed Christ our Lord.  If you can’t attend daily Mass, try at least reading the Epistle and Gospel of the day from the Missal, try reading the life of the Saint of the day from the Breviary or other books.

Today’s feast of the Circumcision of Our Lord is a good example of how we should think about each feastday, and how every day we can learn from the liturgy of the Church.  For today, the little Christ Child, just eight days after he was delivered, shed his first drops of blood.  This might not seem like a big deal, and yet to this day is accorded the highest honour of being made a Holyday of Obligation.  For these first few drops of blood that our Saviour let fall, these alone were sufficient for the redemption of mankind.  Each drop is the source of infinite merit and grace, as each drop is the blood of the infinite God-Man, our Lord himself, everlasting, and omnipotent.

If you were able to go to daily Mass during this Christmas season, you would have noticed in these days since Christmas an unusually frequent mention of the spilling of blood.  It is no coincidence that the very first day after Christmas, the Church celebrates the stoning to death of St. Stephen the First Martyr.  It comes as a salutary reminder that in spite of all the peace and good will that comes from the Angels’ message, nevertheless, as we read in the Second Psalm, “the kings of the earth have arisen, and the rulers have taken counsel together against the Lord, and against his Anointed.”  One such king was the cruel Herod, who ordered the murder of all infants two-years old and younger in the region of Bethlehem.  Indeed, just a couple of days later in the Christmas Octave, this slaughter of the Holy Innocents is commemorated at “Childermas”, with purple vestments and great mourning.  On the next day, it is the turn of St. Thomas à Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, to give his life for the freedom and exaltation of Holy Mother Church, facing the fury of yet another of those “kings of the earth”, Henry II of England.  The very sanctuary of the great cathedral of Canterbury was literally and deliberately strewn with the blood and brains of the martyred Archbishop.

But why so much bloodshed during this holy tide of Christmas?  Or as the same Psalm 2 asks: “Why do the heathen so furiously rage together?”  It is because the Nativity is the grand announcement of our Redemption, a Redemption that would be won only with the shedding of the Precious Blood of the Redeemer.  It was to be the fall of Satan’s kingdom, and thus it is only natural that Satan’s followers would rise up together against the Lord’s Anointed.  But today, the Feast of the Circumcision, that same Infant Redeemer willingly chose to shed his first drops of Blood for our sinful humanity.  He bled so that we might live.  This is the hidden yet true message of Christmas and of all those Yuletide feastdays, which are all fulfilled today with the shedding of that first drop of Divine Blood for all mankind.

As symbolized by the red berries of the holly, blood is shed today.  But the green leaves of the holly remind us that by that Blood, all things are made new, the days are getting longer again, and the green leaves of spring will come again.  “Thou, O Lord, shalt renew the face of the earth.”  But before that great renewal, alas, more of His Blood must flow.  The green leaves of the holly branch do not have smooth edges.  Their thorny leaves warn of that crown which the Roman soldiers would press down on the head of their king before they took him to the Cross.  We must see Our Lord suffer his bitter Passion before we may see him glorious in his Resurrection.  And so today, that same Infant King now calls us, on this Feast of the Circumcision, to come and worship, to conclude the Octave of His Nativity by giving to Him and His Precious Blood the adoration which is meet and right, to give Him the only thing He asks for, which is our love.

So as we go through this doorway into the New Year, let us remember that one day we shall come to another door, the door which is the Gate of Heaven.  To pass through that door, we won’t be able to make “resolutions” to be better in future.  We will have only the past to look back at, as we gather up all the little drops of blood we shed for love of Christ, all those little acts of sacrifice, penance, prayers, rosaries, acts of kindness and love.  Will they be truly only very little drops of blood?  Will they be enough to let us pass through the Gate of Heaven?  Let’s pray that our blessed Mother, who IS the Gate of Heaven and Morning Star, will intercede for us on that day, at the hour of our death, and will welcome us into the Kingdom of her Son, where ours will be not just a happy new year, but a happy eternity for evermore.