Alone in Egypt
“When he prays, he is heard;
he stores up riches who reveres his mother.”cf. Sirach 3:2-6
Christmas is not simply a day but rather a season. The Christmas season runs until the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord, usually occurring during the second week of January. During the first eight days of Christmas, we call it the Octave of Christmas, every day for eight days is Christmas Day! So, Merry Christmas to you! Today, the Sunday following Christmas we celebrate the Feast of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. Yes, they are called the Holy Family, but it does not imply that their life was easy. Not long after Jesus was born, the Holy Family needed to flee Bethlehem for Egypt.
When we hear of Joseph bringing Mary and Jesus to Egypt, we also remember another Joseph who also made a trip to Egypt — well, not so much a trip, but was rather sold into slavery in Egypt. The Joseph we hear of in Genesis was pushed to Egypt because of the jealousy of his brothers. In fact, they thought Joseph was dead. Yet, God had a plan, and Joseph through his suffering and faithfulness to God found favor with the Pharaoh and later became second in command in Egypt. When a famine struck, Joseph’s brothers needed to go to Egypt to get food and supplies. They would never have imagined that the man they are going to ask for help would be the brother they had discarded. When Joseph reunited with his brothers, he forgave them and he said something that showed his love and his mercy, and also his faith, explaining that God had sent him ahead of them to save their lives during the famine. Joseph’s faith in God and His Providence can be summed up in what he says later to his brothers, “What you meant for evil, God meant for good” (Gen. 50:20). What we may intend, in our selfishness and pride, for the ill of others, God will use it for good. Fast forwarding to the Holy Family, what Herod meant for evil (the slaughter of the Holy Innocents), God brought good — preserving the life of Jesus so that He might later lay it down for our sake and our salvation. Both Joseph’s exemplified what it means to be obedient to God and to trust in His Providence. They may not know exactly what God is doing, but they do know and believe that God will bring good, and so they said yes, endured their share of suffering, and kept the faith.
I chose to entitle this reflection “Alone in Egypt” not because I believe that Joseph was abandoned in Egypt, but rather to highlight the importance of “aloneness” or solitude in our lives. Without aloneness with God, Joseph would not be able to have heard the Voice of God and His promptings. It is because Joseph was truly a righteous man, that is being in the right relationship with God, that he was obedient, and the fruit of his obedience was the eventual salvation of souls by the redeeming act of the Cross. There is also another reason why I chose the title for this article. I had recently read something about how the movie Home Alone is really a Christian movie, and watched it through a Christian lens this week. But, I will expand on this on a reflection I will publish tomorrow. So stay tuned for that. Now, back to the Holy Family.
The Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph shows us how a family ought to live. Jesus was obedient to His parents, Mary loved her Son, nursed Him, and supported Him, and Joseph provided for Jesus and taught Him what it meant to be a Son and a man. How well do we live out our roles in the life of our families? As children, are we obedient to our parents? As parents, do we love our children in both word and action, showing them the love of God and teaching them the importance of one’s relationship with Him? The Holy Family had burdens and troubles as any family did, and so they know what we experience. Our Lord came from a family just like ours, and so He can truly empathize with us, for He truly was like us in all things but sin.
The Holy Family shows us what is most important in life: relationship with God and love of God and neighbor, and all this starts by being alone with God, to allow Him to speak to us and to listen with an open heart. When we learn to do this, we will know even when we are going through the Egypts of our lives, that God is with us, that He will provide for us, and that He will bring good out of every situation.
So, brothers and sisters, let us look to the Holy Family as our primary example of how to live our lives as individuals and as a family and let us not be afraid to be alone with God and to trust in His Providence even as we flee to Egypt.
