Feast of Holy Family - Homily 2

Homily 2 – 2007

The Flight into Egypt is a strange little interlude, unique to Matthew.  What was Matthew, the storyteller, up to? He gave a hint when he commented: This was to fulfil what the Lord had said through the prophet: “I called my son out of Egypt.  The prophet that Matthew alluded to was, in fact, Hosea; and the son to whom Hosea referred was the poetic personification of Israel

By having Jesus and his family, firstly, flee into Egypt, and, then, come out of Egypt, Matthew wanted to get his readers to make the connection between Israel’s experience of liberation from slavery in Egypt, under the leadership of Moses, and the Christian experience of an even deeper liberation under the leadership of Jesus.

Matthew wanted his readers to see that Christian life – following Jesus – would be a journey into freedom, and a journey of discovery of the God who sets us free from our own addictions and compulsions, and who sets society free from the irrelevance, the emptiness, the frantic distractions, and the power games that too often cripple and distort it.  It would be Matthew’s purpose in the rest of his Gospel to fill in the detail that could help the reader to discover even more the heart and the mind of God, and, through wholehearted surrender to God, to taste the experience of freedom.

It is the Church’s hope that, as we reflect on Matthew’s Gospel during the Sundays of the year that lies ahead, we, too, journey further into the Mystery of God and find the freedom for which Christ has set us free.

And that is my wish for you, too, as we leave 2007 behind and brace ourselves for 2008.  Happy New Year!