Out of Egypt have I called my son.
The flight of the Holy Family into Egypt to save
the Child from the terror of Herod seems to be a story designed to arouse our
sympathy and concern. In some places
this Sunday is kept as Immigrant and Refugee Sunday or as an opportunity to proclaim
the holiness of the family. Worthy matters no doubt. But the account in St. Matthew’s Gospel raises more
questions than it answers. Nothing is said about the heavy burden placed on St.
Joseph or on Our Lady. The angelic order is simply ‘take the child and his mother
and flee to Egypt.’ The safety of the Child is all that matters. There is
nothing about the difficulty of the journey or what Joseph is to do for a
living or where they are to stay or what they are to do. No sooner are they
commanded to go than they are commanded to return to the land of Israel. It is safe now. The Child is all that matters.
What child
is this?
The Child matters at this stage not because of what he does or what he says but of who he is.
That is what St. Matthew wants us to see in the going to Egypt and the
returning to Nazareth. Not so much geographical relocation but theological
relocation.
St. Matthew wrote his Gospel for the Jews and
the mere mention of Joseph and Egypt would set off in the minds of Jews a constellation
of theological associations. Egypt: the place to which the patriarch Joseph had
fled after his brothers had left him for dead. Egypt: the place from which the
Lord God had led his people out of slavery. That tells us who this Child is: a
Savior, a Savior who will be left for dead by his brothers.
Out of
Egypt have I called my son. This is a quote from the prophet Hosea and refers
collectively to the nation of Israel in the Exodus. This Child will reproduce
in himself the whole history of the Jewish people. For forty years Israel
tempted God in the wilderness; in the same wilderness for forty days Jesus will
be tempted by the Devil. It was on a mountain-top that the first imperfect law
was given to Moses; on a mountain-top too that Jesus gave his disciples the
perfect law – “The Sermon on the Mount.” The temple was the meeting place of
God and man; the temple of the body of the Lord, destroyed but raised in three
days, will become the meeting place of God and man. This Child is the end, the
conclusion of the whole history of Israel.
He went
and dwelt in a city called Nazareth, that what was spoken by the prophets might
be fulfilled, "He shall be called a Nazarene.” No such verse existed in the Hebrew Scriptures.
Possibly, Matthew had a word play in mind between the town "Nazareth"
and the Hebrew word "nazir," meaning "concentrated to God."
Samuel was the prime example of a nazir, one whose life was given to God from
birth. ‘ a holy person consecrated to God. Isaiah 11:1 called a future Davidic
king a "nazir."
This is why this Child must be saved and why
paradoxically in the end he cannot be saved that every child might be saved. “His hour has not yet come” he will tell his
mother at the Wedding at Cana. But the whole of human history awaits that
hour. So must we.
Out of Egypt have I called my son.
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