Since, in the interruption of this spiritual circumcision, [there] is nothing which could at all excuse us, [it is] rather to be considered whether the uncertain stirring of the heavenly cloud — in [the face of] the certain hour of emigrating hence [death] — and the invitation to the journey, do not rather urge us [on]. “Watch,” says [the Lord] (Mark 13 v. 35): “for you know not when the Lord of the house comes — [whether] at evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or in the morning; lest, when he comes suddenly, he find you sleeping.” And (Luke 12 v. 45): “If that servant say in his heart, ‘My Lord delays to come,’ and begin to strike the men-servants and maid-servants, and to eat and drink and be drunken: the Lord of that servant will come on a day on which he hopes not, and at an hour which he knows not, and will divide him, and will place his portion with the unfaithful.” And again (ch. 21 v. 34): “But take heed to yourselves, lest perhaps your hearts be weighed down with surfeiting and drunkenness and the cares of this life, and that day come suddenly upon you. For as a snare shall [it] come upon all who sit upon the face of the whole earth.” For—
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—[which] excused those [former ones], as [was] said above: the pain of the body, and the sickness, arising from circumcision. But in this spiritual circumcision [there] is no debility of the body, no infirmity and sickness, but a grief of the soul, contrition, the love of God, and the desire of a better life — which, the greater they [are], the safer, better, and more salutary [is our] emigration from this life. And to that circumcision, the Passover — which is to be kept by us in this life and in the future — ought to stir and impel us; and [likewise] that heavenly place, in which nothing polluted and superfluous ought to be. Lucifer, assuredly, was cast out from thence, and thrown down with his Angels, because the foreskin of pride and arrogance abounded [swelled] in him. And how great a glory [it would be] to God and our Saviour, the true Joshua — how great an edification to all nations — if, in us Christians, the circumcision of vices and of all proud things were repeated and almost continual? [if] no luxury be discerned in the care of the body, in the heaping-up of empty riches, in the apparatus and delights of tables, in the levity of games and words, in the pursuits and institutions of the whole life? But how many, thus, are circumcised in this life and in the future, cannot be certainly defined by us; yet good and suitable conjectures — observed by the Fathers — exist, through which, though far otherwise than [things] which fall under faith [i.e. not with certainty], yet in some way the predestination and number of the blessed can be foreknown. But this [is] certain: [that] we, as many as are circumcised, are best circumcised by those who are already circumcised. For those [are] the best Masters and Doctors of leading life, who have cut away all vices in themselves, rejected whatever is superfluous, [and] cut off whatever is petulant, impudent, and luxuriating in [their] actions, words, [and] thoughts. See Lactantius (bk. 4, ch. 23 & 24). But the knife by which the circumcision is made imports indeed something bitter (for “the violent seize the kingdom of heaven”); but [the knife], because [it] is of stone and rock, signifies CHRIST JESUS — who is called by St. Paul “the spiritual rock” (1 Cor. 10), and indeed even according to [his] divinity, according to which, in Scripture (especially the Hebrew), God is often called “Rock” and “stone” (Deut. 32; Ps. 94; and elsewhere). So Origen (hom. 4), and — last on this book — Theodoret (q. 3), [and] Rupert (ch. 16) noted that figure of the Rock; and indeed in such a way that the two former take, in the knife itself, also the word of God, which penetrates even the inmost marrow of souls, and cuts away all vain and superfluous [things]. But Rupert looks also to the blessed-life circumcision, saying: “The stone knife — by which, having been already once circumcised, we have risen by the first resurrection, and by which, to be circumcised a second time by the second circumcision (that is, by the resurrection of the flesh), we are going to rise again — is the word of God: the word, I say, of God, living and efficacious, and more penetrating than any two-edged sword — by whose power we shall rise, [and] by whose efficacy we shall be wholly despoiled of corruption. Therefore the stone knife is Christ; for the word of God is Christ, and Christ himself was called a stone, or Rock.” Nor is that to be passed over: [that] as soon as we have crossed the Jordan, that circumcision is to be in no way deferred; but after Baptism, penance, the examination of conscience, and the taking-up of a good resolution, the knives are straightway to be sharpened, and whatever in our skin is too much, and like a foreskin, all that is to be—
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—cut off. But what are all sins, except reproaches? All omissions of the [things] which we could do — of good [things] and of virtues — what [are they], except matter of maledictions, and of most-just reproaches which the angered Lord deservedly casts against us? Truly Origen (in the cited place, and more clearly, hom. 5), when he had enumerated the various kinds of sins from ch. 3 to Titus, [says]: “Do not these seem to you to be reproaches — and reproaches of Egypt?”
But the place of the rolling-away of all reproaches, and the true Galgala, are — in the other world — heaven (whether you consider the reproaches of soul or of body, whether true or feigned, of which kind is the Passion of the Lord, which — as Lactantius says, bk. 4 ch. 16 — is wont to be cast at us as [it were] a reproach, [namely] that we worship both a man, and [one] afflicted by men with a signal punishment and tortured). But in this world, the Galgala are the holy Catholic Church, outside of which no Egyptian reproaches are removed, no sins remitted, no roots of vices cut out, no foreskins of crimes rolled away. Of that kind, too, are Galgala all the schools of virtue and probity, all the gymnasia of piety, all religious families and houses — in which the circumcision is celebrated not only of vices, but of all the riches, pleasures, and arrogancies which allure and invite to them. But for this [it] is necessary that we persist constant in those Galgala, and turn away thence to no other [place], until we are wholly healed in our souls, and can keep a joyful Passover. Of which [it] follows next.