“Arise, take the Child and His Mother, and flee to Egypt; stay there until I warn you, for Herod is going to seek the Child to kill Him.”

Newroom (30/01/2022 10:46, Gaudium Press) St. Joseph received this order from his Angel in a dream to escape from an imminent risk.

Upon awakening, St. Joseph could have thought it was only a dream, and, moved by materialistic criteria, he could have thought of his work in Nazareth – stopped for almost two months – and of the need to delay for some time the great inconvenience that this transfer to Egypt would mean.

Next to him was the Eternal Word, almighty God come down to earth… and would he be forced to flee with Him? Who, in that situation, even after such a clear dream, would get up at night, take his own and begin a journey of indefinite duration? “Get up and flee”… with God and His Mother!

And if it was to flee, why not follow the Magi, who had just left Bethlehem? Instead of going to Egypt, a foreign country in which they knew no one.

But for St. Joseph, the important thing was the voice of God. And he preferred to obey, even knowing all the risks he would run going to Egypt and that Jesus could be killed at any moment. Flexible to grace, “he rose in the night, took the Child and his Mother, and departed for Egypt” (Mt 2:14).

There were so many difficulties and problems along the way that St. Joseph thought of changing his destination; he did not do so only because of the heavenly mandate and the prophecies that announced the Redeemer’s passage through Egypt.

Why Egypt?

There was a reason behind the divine wisdom in the harsh vicissitudes of this journey. As Dr. Plinio points out, “in the flight into Egypt it was the Holy Church that, alone, was wandering in the desert.”

The first fruits of Christianity being there, God wanted the Holy Family to make reparation for all the infidelities committed by the Hebrews when they left that nation.

Such sins, in fact, were those that most offended Him in salvation history prior to the deicide, for the primordial light of the children of Abraham, that is, the aspect of the Creator they were most called to represent consisted in faith, in the impossible and the unrealizable, in believing when all seemed lost.

The deeds of Abraham (cf. Gen 22:10-12), Jacob (cf. Gen 27:22-23), Esther (cf. Est 14:1-19), or the three young men in the fiery furnace (cf. Dan 3:14-93), among many others, show well that the virtue of the great Saints of this people rose to the angelic when they found themselves in a situation without human solution.

On the way to the Promised Land the chosen people sinned exactly against this call, displeasing the Lord greatly. Nevertheless, moved by a deep love for His inheritance, He wanted to make amends through His three most beloved creatures.

Thus, cleansed of this guilt before divine justice, Israel could worthily receive the Messiah and the Redemption.

With this objective, along the entire route, the Holy Family stopped at the most symbolic places of the people’s rebellion against God, performing acts of reparation.

They were, for example, at the stone of Meriba, where there was a rebellion over the scarcity of water (cf. Ex 17:1-7; Num 20:1-13). There they prayed, very recollected, in order to repair that sin against the faith.

And Our Lady, Mother of Mercy, prayed especially for Moses, so that at the time of his death, his fault would be erased, and not be imputed to him at the moment of entering Heaven.

Msgr. João Scognamiglio Clá Dias, EP.

Taken, with minor adaptations, from: Saint Joseph: who knows him?… Saint Paul: Lumen Sapientiæ, 2017.