The Great Commentary of Cornelius a Lapide: S. Luke
Secondly , to sanction the rite which God had instituted.
Thirdly , to show that He was of the seed of Abraham, who had received the ordinance of circumcision as a sign of the faith which He had in reference to Christ.
Fourthly , to take away all excuse from the Jews, lest they should not accept Him if He were uncircumcised.
Fifthly , to commend to us by His own example the virtue of obedience. Hence it was that He was circumcised on the eighth day, as the law prescribed.
Sixthly , that, having come in the likeness of the flesh of sin, He might not seem to reject the remedy by which the flesh had been wont to be cleansed of sin.
Seventhly , that, bearing the burden of the law Himself, He might free others from that burden, “ God sent forth His Son made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law,” Gal. iv.
S. Leo (Serm. 2 on the Nativity) adds as another reason that by this rite Christ’s character was hidden from the devil : “ The merciful and Almighty Saviour, so conducting the beginning of His assumption of human nature as to hide the virtue of the Godhead inseparable from His humanity with the veil of our infirmity, eluded the craft of the enemy, who was secure in the supposition that the birth of this child, begotten for the salvation of mankind, was no less liable to His power than that of all other children who are born.”
S. Augustine (Serm. 9 on the Nativity) gives yet another reason— that putting an end to the carnal, Christ might put in its place that spiritual circumcision which consists in the mortification and cutting away of vices and concupiscence — “Christ,” he says, “took circumcision upon Himself as about to do away with circumcision ; He admitted the shadow as about to give light — the figure as He that should fulfil the verity.”
Lastly , by this act He began that suffering by which He became the Redeemer and Saviour of the world. So it was that in this rite the name of “ Jesus ” was given Him, because He healed not our infirmities with drugs, as the physicians do, but by taking them upon Himself and making satisfaction for them to God, so earning the power of healing all the diseases of soul and of body, all our passions, temptations, sorrows, and afflictions, whether in this life or in the life to come. Art thou afflicted, then, with fear or overscrupulousness , with anger or bitterness, with sorrow or poverty?
Call upon Jesus, and thou shalt feel that He is thy Consoler and thy Saviour.
Christ was circumcised in the cave where He was born by some priest or Levite, and felt greater pain than other infants, in that He had the use of reason which other infants lack, and possessed a more delicate and active sense of touch.
His name was called Jesus. The name of Jesus signifies the function of Saviour in its greatest fulness, inasmuch as He not only saved men Himself, but gave to His apostles and to those like them the power of saving. This is what is implied by the word Josue , or, as the Hebrews say, Jehosua . Let the faithful then remember that they are children of Jesus, and that they ought therefore to imitate Him in bringing about the salvation of souls.
Which was so named of the angel (when Gabriel announced to the Blessed Virgin His conception, ch. i. ver. 31) before He was conceived in the womb. For Christ was conceived at the end of the Annunciation, when the Blessed Virgin answered, “Behold the handmaid of the Lord, be it unto me according to Thy word.” In this sentence S. Luke gives us to understand that the name of Jesus had been decreed by God for this Child from all eternity, to signify that He was to be the Saviour of the world.
Observe here how God joins and couples in Christ the humble with the sublime, the human with the divine, the poison with the antidote, to show that in Him human nature was joined to the Divine Majesty. Christ would be circumcised, so taking on Him the appearance of sin, but presently, when He wipes away this appearance He gives Him the name of Jesus — the Saviour that heals all sins. So, too, He would have Christ born in a stable and laid in a manger, as being poor and abject; but soon He summoned by the star the three kings, and by the angel the shepherds to adore Him. So, again, He would have Him suffer, be crucified, and die ; but at the same time He darkened the sun and the moon, rent the rocks and shook the earth, that all the elements might testify of, and mourn for, the ignominious murder of their Creator. The more, then, Christ humbled Himself, the more the Father exalted Him. To thee, Christian, He will do the same ; wherefore fear not to be humbled, knowing for certain that by this means thou art to be exalted. For the road to glory is humiliation, according to that promise of Christ, “Every one that humbleth himself shall be exalted.”
Ver. 22. — And when the days of her purification according to the law of Moses were accomplished , they brought Him to Jerusalem , to present Him to the Lord . Observe that here three different ordinances are intertwined and joined together. The first is that of Lev. xii. 2, et seq., that a woman, if she have borne a male child, shall remain unclean for forty days, and then be purified in the temple legally, that is, by the sacrificial rite prescribed by the law. The second, that the mother offer to God a lamb, as a holocaust for her own purification (not that of her child, as S. Augustine would have it), and a young turtle-dove or pigeon as a sin-offering, if she be rich; but if poor, only a pair of turtle-doves or two young pigeons (Lev. xii. 6, 7). And the third, that if the offspring be a male, and the firstborn, it be set before God, and offered to Him as His due, and holy, that is, consecrated on account of the immunity of the firstborn of the Hebrews granted them by God, when the firstborn of Pharaoh and the Egyptians were smitten by the angel in the time of Moses (Exod. xiii. 1). The child, however, so offered might be redeemed by his parents for five shekels (Num. iii. 47). Symbolically, these five shekels stood for the five wounds of Christ, with which, as with a price, He redeems the human race.
The days of her purification. In the old law the woman bearing a child was unclean, with a natural, a legal, and a moral uncleanness ; but especially because she bore a child whom she conceived in original sin. The natural uncleanness was that physically incidental to her gestation and delivery ; and the legal defilement was consequent upon this, for the law, on account of these impurities, regarded her as impure, and directed that she be kept away from the temple, and be held, as it were, “unclean” for forty days, until, on the fortieth day, she was purified by the prescribed rite.
With reference to the question whether the Blessed Virgin suffered this impurity, S. Jerome (Ep. 22 ad Eustochium), John of Avila, commenting on Lev. xii., and Erasmus on this same passage, affirm that she did. All other authorities, however, agree in the contrary view, since the Virgin’s parturition was perfectly pure. See S. Augustine (de Quinque haeresibus , ch. v). This point has been treated in what has been said on v. 7 of the present chapter. Hence the Blessed Virgin incurred no defilement, and therefore was not bound by the law of purification. Yet, in her zeal for humility, in order to make herself like other women who bear children, that she might not give scandal in seeming to be singular, and that she might conceal her virginity and her conception by the Holy Ghost, the Blessed Virgin was willing to be purified, even as Christ, for similar reasons, was willing to be circumcised. Hence S. Bernard ( Serm . 3 on the Purification) says : “ In this conception , and in this child-birth, there was nothing impure, nothing sinful, nothing that had to be purged, for this offspring is the fount of purity, and is come to make a cleansing of sins. What is there in me for a legal observance to purify — in me, who, by this immaculate parturition, am become most pure ? Truly, O Blessed Virgin, thou hadst no need for purification; but had thy Son need of circumcision ? Be thou among women as one of them, for so too is thy Son among men.”
Tropologically, the purification of the soul is penance, and this the Blessed Virgin underwent, not for her own sins, seeing that she had none, but for those of others, as Christ did. Still she did not undergo the Sacrament of Penance, because she had no sins of her own to confess. See S. Chrysostom, Tertullian, S. Augustine, and S. Ambrose in his book “ On Penance.”
To present Him to the Lord. The Syriac version has “in the presence of the Lord.” The Blessed Virgin, holding Christ in her hands, on bended knee, offered Him to God with the greatest reverence and devotion, saying, “Behold, O Eternal Father, this is Thy Son whom Thou hast wished to take flesh from me for the salvation of men. To Thee I render Him, and to Thee I offer Him entirely, that Thou mayest do with Him and with me as it shall please Thee, and by Him mayest redeem the world.” So saying, she presented Him to the priest as to the representative of God ; and then she redeemed Him with five shekels, as the law prescribed.