I admit this is an aspect of the Precious Blood of which I had never thought before. ANd I'm not sure I want to.

Nice BLOG, good links, Fr.

"Precious Blood of Jesus,
shed in the circumcision,
make me pure of mind, heart and body. "

Like so many things that were part of daily life 2000 years ago, as Americans, we live a very sterile life. We don't see our sons circumcised because it is done in a sterile hospital environment. (Not to mention that aside from religious obligations, the need for infant circumcision is now being questioned by some in the medical field. But that is another discussion for a different blog.)

I understand that in Jewish tradition it is a specific religious event with a designated person to do it and the family was present so the parents would have seen their son's blood shed at this time. For all of us who are parents or aunts and uncles and who have seen a child bleed and cry, even over a scraped knee, it is hard to bear. How much more so for God the Father and Mary and Joseph to see the infant Jesus, in his human nature, bleed and cry his baby wails as He surely must have done. I love this meditation as part of praying the Precious Blood Chaplet because it doesn't hide and sterilize the sufferings of Christ right from his infancy.

Nowadays, the father might be present, but depending on the strand of Jewish practice,
not the mother.