Anthony van Dyck, “Rest on the Flight into Egypt” (1630)
Spiritual Sunday
One of today’s Gospel readings, about the holy family’s flight into Egypt, is only too relevant given the various refugee crises we are currently witnessing. If we close our doors and our hearts to those who are fleeing persecution, we shut out the messiah. As William Blake puts it in “Holy Thursday,”
Then cherish pity, lest you drive an angel from your door
Joseph Brodsky has an account of a moment during the flight. First, here’s Matthew’s account (2:13-15):
After the wise men had left, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, “Get up, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you; for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.” Then Joseph got up, took the child and his mother by night, and went to Egypt, and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet, “Out of Egypt I have called my son.”
Brodsky depicts Joseph, Mary, and Jesus huddled in a cave with “blizzard, sandstorm, howling air” outside. Mary prays, the fire moans, and Joseph contemplates the difficulties ahead, complicated by the presence of an infant.
But then there’s a shift. The worries of the past day are behind them (they’ve slipped out the door like smoke), a sigh is heard, and the star gazes in on them. Call it a presentiment of hope, even though only the baby fully understands the gaze and he’s not talking.
Flight into Egypt (2)
By Joseph Brodsky
Translated by Seamus Heaney
In the cave—it sheltered them, at least,
safer than four square-set right angles—
in the cave the threesome felt secure
in the reek of straw and old clobber.
Straw for bedding. Outside the door,
blizzard, sandstorm, howling air,
Mule rubbed ox; they stirred and groaned
like sand and snowflake scourged in wind.
Mary prays; the fire soughs;
Joseph frowns into the blaze.
Too small to be fit to do a thing
but sleep, the infant is just sleeping.
Another day behind them now,
its worries past. And the “ho, ho, ho!”
of Herod who had sent the troops.
And the centuries a day closer too.
That night, as three, they were at peace.
Smoke like a retiring guest
slipped out the door. There was one far-off
heavy sigh from the mule. Or the ox.
The star looked in across the threshold.
The only one of them who could
know the meaning of that look
was the infant. But He did not speak.
The peace represented by the star may be centuries off but the momentary lulls gives us a sense of the Christmas promise. The “far-off heavy sigh” is the world exhaling after the unbearable tension.