Joshua 5:8

Those who were disobedient to the commands of the Lord are called uncircumcised. From this it is understood that those are named uncircumcised who do not obey the commandments of God. But nevertheless both the circumcised and the uncircumcised — because God loves every soul — he does not utterly abandon. For he sent Jesus, who would circumcise all at once, both the worthy and the unworthy — not Jesus the son of Nave, for that man did not circumcise the people with a true and perfect circumcision — but Jesus our Lord and Savior. For it is he who truly cuts away from us the pollution of the flesh and purges from our heart and soul the defilements of sins. Listen, then, to what Scripture says in those things which were prefigured through the son of Nave. "But the children of Israel, having been circumcised," it says, "rested, sitting in the same place in the camp, until they were healed. And then the Lord said to Jesus: this day I have taken away the reproach of Egypt from you." For it is not enough for us to be "circumcised," but also after circumcision to be "healed," that is, until the very wound of circumcision closes over with a scar. When, then, is the scar closed over the wound of our circumcision? I judge it thus, that to be circumcised through our Jesus is to lack vices, to lay aside evil habits and the worst practices, to cut away foul and disordered manners and whatever shrinks back from the rule of honor and piety. But when we do this in the beginnings, we are constrained by the very difficulty, so to speak, of the newness, and as though with a certain labor and grief of soul we change the faults of our old habit by a new practice. And therefore there is, as I said, a certain difficulty in the beginnings, and only with hardship and pain are we able to amputate the first things and take up the second. This, then, seems to me to be the time in which, as though in the pain of our circumcision, we are said "to remain, until," the scar having closed, "we are healed." And we close the scar when we now fulfill the new practices without difficulty, and what before seemed difficult, as being unaccustomed, turns into a habit for us. And then indeed we are said truly to be "healed," when, lacking vices, by a new practice we turn virtue into nature.