Posts Tagged ‘Matthew 2:13-15 & 19-23’
Finding meaning in our flight into Egypt – Br. Jack Crowley
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Well good morning and Happy New Year! Thank you for braving the cold and joining us. I know for me, at some point a little after New Year’s, I start to say to myself…I think I’m ready for spring. Even this New England boy has his limits.
Our Gospel this morning featured the Holy Family’s great flight into Egypt. Now I must confess that this is a story I don’t think about too often. During Christmastide, I prefer to think about warm, cozy manger scenes. Yet there is something gripping about this great flight into Egypt. The image of a newborn babe and parents with their firstborn child fleeing for their lives is hard to look away from. There’s just something about a new family being in danger that makes us pay attention.
Part of what makes us pay attention to the flight into Egypt is how stressful it is. It’s a stressful story fueled by an atmosphere of violence. The threat of King Herod murdering baby Jesus is dominating. Now it may be hard for us to imagine the mindset of someone in power not only feeling threatened by a baby, but also willing to kill that baby, but that was the world that Jesus was born into, a world swirling with stress, power, and violence. Read More
Out of Egypt – Br. James Koester
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Jeremiah 37: 1-14
Psalm 84: 1-8
Ephesians 1: 3-6, 15-19a
Matthew 2: 13-15, 19-23
She looked quite ancient, I thought, as I watched her watching us as we walked down the narrow street that would take us past where she was sitting. As we got closer I realized it wasn’t age that made her look old, but obviously a hard life. She couldn’t have been more than about 50 or so. I was sure that she would soon stretch out her hand, begging a few coins, or better still some US dollars, from one or more of us. And sure enough, just as we got within reach, out came her arm, but not to cup her hand in expectation of loose change. Rather she held out her wrist so that we could all see the tiny blue cross tattooed there. “Christian, Christian” she repeated and beamed and waved her wrist, as we filed past, acknowledging her greeting and went on our way. Read More
The Flight into Egypt – Br. Eldridge Pendleton
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Jeremiah 31: 7-14; Psalm 84: 1-8; Ephesians 1: 3-6, 15-19a; Matthew 2: 13-15, 19-23
I have been reading Tracy Kidder’s Strength in What Remains, the story of a young Burundian Tutsi who fled for his life to the United States after great suffering and months of running and hiding during the genocidal holocaust that swept through Burundi and neighboring Rwanda fifteen years ago. Throughout the long months of massacre in which he lost members of his family, friends and neighbors, Deo Gratias, for that is his name, lived in the forest a hunted man, constantly on the run, starving and sick, until a friend and former classmate at medical school (and, ironically, a Hutu, the ethnic group responsible for the slaughter), saved his life by helping him get a visa and a plane ticket to the United States. Deo arrived in America virtually penniless, and without a job or the ability to speak English. He barely survived. Then a series of miraculous encounters involving a former nun, a lawyer, a childless couple and Dr. Paul Farmer turned his life around and enabled him to get a degree from Columbia, finish medical school, and embark on a project to build a free clinic in a remote area of Burundi that would not only minister to the sick but also bring peace and reconciliation to the warring ethnic factions of that region. Experiencing years of such abject tragedy could easily have embittered him, but instead it had the opposite effect. This is an amazing story of one man’s determination to work wonders against all odds, and how his personal dedication and sense of mission have inspired others and liberated them from fear and violence.
I came to this story of the Holy Family’s flight into exile in Egypt with the modern story of Deo’s escape to the United States fresh in my mind and remembered the many millions who have had to undergo similar traumatic moves to flee evil and death. Read More