Sunday after the Circumcision

he Epistle of St. Paul to the Galatians, iv. 1-7.

Brethren: As the heir is a child, he differeth nothing from a servant, though he be lord of all: but is under tutors and governors until the time appointed by the father: so we also, when we were children, were serving under the elements of the world. But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent His Son, made of a woman, made under the law, that He might redeem them who were under the law: that we might receive the adoption of sons. And because you are sons, God hath sent the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying: Abba, Father. Therefore now he is not a servant, but a son. And if a son, an heir also, through God.

    How are we to understand the words, "God sent His Son, made under the law, that He might redeem them who were under the law"?
    St. Paul here speaks to such Christians among the Galatians as were formerly Jews, and who supposed themselves yet bound to keep the observances of the Law of Mosesl he shows them that by His death on the cross He dispensed with the Law, abolished its types and ceremonies, and redeemed the Jews from the curse and bondage to which it subjected them, delivering them thereby from sin and eternal death. We have received still greater favors than the Jews, because in our ancestors we were converted from Paganism to Christianity, and from children of the devil were made by faith heirs of God. Let us show how we value such blessings by living as children of God, in faith, love, confidence, patience, and innocence, shunning sin as the only real evil; unless we would forfeit our name and privileges as Christians, and voluntarily become a second time the slaves of the devil.

he Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ, According to St. Matthew, ii. 19-23.

At that time: When Herod was dead, behold an angel of the Lord appeared in sleep to Joseph in Egypt. Saying: Arise, and take the child and His mother, and go into the land of Israel. For they are dead that sought the life of the child. Who arose, and took the child and His mother, and came into the land of Israel. But hearing that Archelaus reigned in Judea in the room of Herod his father, he was afraid to go thither: and being warned in sleep retired into the quarters of Galilee. And coming he dwelt in a city called Nazareth: that it might be fulfilled which was said by prophets: That he shall be called a Nazarite.

Prayer.

    O my Saviour and Redeemer, Jesus of Nazareth, Who didst subject Thyself to travel as a fugitive upon earth, with no resting-place in which to remain in safety, yet hast now Thy throne at the right hand of Thy Father in the majesty of God, teach me to consider this world a foreign land, and my life that of a pilgrim, that in Thee and Thy Father I may find my home. Strengthen me by Thy grace to prepare myself worthily for the land of eternal happiness, and receive me, when I leave this world, into Thy glory, where Thou livest and reignest with the Father and the Holy Ghost, for all eternity. Amen.