The Flight into Egypt
January 19, 2020
Fra. Bartolomeo, Rest on the Flight into Egypt; c. 1500
“ONE night when Joseph was peacefully sleeping at Bethlehem, an Angel’s voice aroused him from his slumber, and he saw before him one of the messengers of the Most High, who said: “Arise, and take the young Child and His Mother, and fly into the land of Egypt, for Herod will seek the young Child to destroy Him.” Hence observe:
That God’s ways are very different from ours. We should have expected that He would exert His Divine power in behalf of His only-begotten Son, and that the soldiers of Herod would be struck with blindness on the road, or would somehow fail to discover where Jesus was, or perhaps would come and fall prostrate at the feet of the new-born King. How different the course enjoined by the Angel! Apparently so clumsy a way of saving Jesus from His enemies. Yet such are God’s ways–clumsy in the eyes of men. What strange presumption it is that I should criticize the Divine arrangements as I sometimes do.
Then the conditions of safety seemed so unnecessarily hard. Why to Egypt? A pagan land, the very name of which was a synonym for bondage and misery. Was this the only way to preserve the life of the Son of God? To all this one answer: It was God’s will, and that was enough.
But after all it was but a vision of the night, perhaps a dream or a mere subjective fancy. Could anything so wild and imprudent come from God? To all this one answer: I know the message came from God, and I cannot and will not evade the Divine command.”
— Daily Meditations in January, Rev. R.F. Clarke, S.J.
