The 1969 Roman Calendar reform recovered Jan. 1 as the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God. This is among the oldest feasts associated with the Octave Day of Christmas and reaffirms a basic truth that our modern society is rapidly forgetting: the wholeness and integrity of persons.

Mary gave birth to a person, not just a nature: Jesus takes his human nature from Mary, but he is truly a human as well as divine person. God did not cling jealously to his divinity but shares it with humanity so that we can be lifted up as “sons in the Son.” And none of that would have been possible without the involvement of Mary, the Mother of God, Theotokos. It is, therefore, fitting we begin the year under her patronage.

Fitting but accidental. While the Church associates a variety of themes with Jan. 1 in addition to the Solemnity of Mary, the Mother of God — Jesus’ circumcision and “World Day of Peace” — the civil New Year isn’t one of them. That’s because, for a long time, New Year actually fell on March 25. That the new year should begin in spring is to be found broadly in many cultures. Chinese New Year, for example, is basically a start of spring festival. Within the Christian world, the new year long coincided with March 25 because it was the Annunciation — the conception of Jesus Christ — so that the year began with the life of Jesus. Given the continuing struggle over defending human life from its very beginning, it’s perhaps too bad we lost that tradition.

As I noted, two other events in the Church coincide with Jan. 1. Until the Roman Calendar reform, it was actually the feast of the Circumcision, which is also today’s Gospel because it historically coincides with the Octave of Christmas: “When eight days were completed for his circumcision, he was named Jesus …” (Luke 2:21). In 1968, Pope St. Paul VI also designated Jan. 1 as “World Day of Peace,” with a votive Mass authorized for celebration today.

Our artistic commentary will focus on the circumcision.

Circumcision is the bodily sign of belonging to God’s covenant with his people. It was the sign of incorporation into that covenant. God first prescribed it as a sign of the covenant he made with Abraham, in Genesis 17:1-27. It is also when Abraham receives from God that name, changed from Abram, signifying his new identity. We speak of Abraham as our “father in faith,” ready to do what God asked of him, no matter what. Genesis 17 speaks of Abraham as a grown man: verse 24 says he was 99 when he was circumcised; his son Ishmael was 13. For grown men to remove the foreskin of their penises is an act of dedicated faith. 

Genesis 17:12 first prescribes circumcision as an ongoing ritual to be performed on the eighth day after birth. Because some Jews had not been circumcised during their 40-year wandering in Sinai at the time of the Exodus, Joshua (5:2-8) reports the circumcision of all uncircumcised males prior to Israel’s entry into the Promised Land. The legal norm for circumcision on the eighth day is established in the Law: see Leviticus 12:3. Later prophets will rail against the failure to circumcise flesh and heart (the purity of one’s heart in undivided covenant to Yahweh): see Ezekiel 44:7-9; Jeremiah 4:4; also, Deuteronomy 10:16. 

Circumcision was an undeniable, even physical sign of belonging to the Jewish people. That’s why various persecutors of the Jews sought to ban its practice. That’s why the Nazis, when confronted by a fugitive who denied being a Jew, regarded circumcision as proof. That’s why there are some secular extremists — some even within the Church who would ban infant baptism in the name of “choice” — that seek to make infant circumcision illegal, a phenomenon especially noted in Europe. 

The Workshop of Jacopo Da Ponte — also called Jacopo Bassano (c 1510-1592) painted “The Circumcision” in 1577. It’s not clear to me whether his two sons may have been involved with it. 

“The Circumcision” blends Old and New Testament themes in an ahistorical manner. That’s not uncommon in Christian art about the circumcision. There is a Catholic pious devotion about Jesus’ Seven Sheddings of his Sacred Blood — the circumcision was the first. (The others include Gethsemane, the Scourging, the Crowning with Thorns, the Stripping, the Crucifixion and the Piercing of his Heart.) Jesus’ shedding of his blood is therefore correlated with his Redemption and the Eucharist. When Christian artists painted the Circumcision — particularly when the Circumcision was the primary focus of Jan. 1 — they tended to bring all those ideas together. That’s apparent in this painting.

The event appears to take place in a sacred setting, a temple-like structure. That already is misleading, as most circumcisions in that day probably occurred in the family home. Mary and Joseph (one reason I picked this painting was its inclusion of Our Blessed Lady) present Jesus on what looks something like a Christian altar. The Jewish official (mohel may not have yet been in use) awaits them, flint knife and bowl at hand. Jesus appears literally as if being presented for sacrifice.

All history appears assembled, including a pope and another bishop behind the Holy Family. Most of the rest of the repertoire around the altar seems dressed in 16th-century Italian Renaissance, rather than 1st-century Jewish, clothing.

There are two turtledoves in a basket next to the little boy who is kneeling. This, too, represents a mixing up of Jewish customs. A woman was obliged to make an offering for her purification after childbirth, which took place in the case of a male child 40 days after birth (Leviticus 12:4-5). That is why what is now called on Feb. 2 “the Presentation of the Lord” used to be “the Presentation of the Lord and the Purification of Mary” (as if Mary required purification, but “allow it for now, for it is fitting we fulfill all righteousness” — Matthew 3:15). Turtledoves, incidentally, were the substitute offering for a woman’s purification: Leviticus (12:8) prescribed the offering of a lamb but allowed two turtledoves in lieu of a lamb if the woman could “not afford a lamb.”

Not only is Judaism and Christianity present in this painting, but so are the temporal life and the afterlife. Above the altar, the Trinity looks down, angels in adoration. Below the altar, the souls in Purgatory await Jesus’ first shedding of his blood as a promise of deliverance.

Jesus first shed his blood in the Circumcision, a shedding of his blood his Mother almost certainly witnessed. It would not be the last time she witnessed that. It would be consummated on Calvary, where the Mother of God also becomes the Mother of the Church and Our Mother (John 19:27).