Sunday after Nativity
Masters, Fathers, Mothers, Brothers, and Sisters, Bless!
On the Sunday after Nativity, we read Matthew 2:13-23 which recounts the Flight into Egypt. Saint Nicholai of Zicha (Homilies, volume I, pages 51, 53, 54. Tr. Mother Maria, Lazarica Press, Birmingham, England, 1996.) explains why our Lord went to distant Egypt.
In Christ,
+ Fr. Noah
Lastly, there is an important reason on the general, human level for the Lord Jesus' going to Egypt, and not to some other country. He did not begin His earthly mission only at the age of thirty, when He opened His divine lips and began to teach. He began His mission at His conception. At His conception by the Holy Spirit, He already had a follower. This was the holy Theotokos. What not Joseph converted to Christ before His birth. Did not His birth open heaven to the shepherds and fill the astrologers from the East with truth, prayer, and immortality? Did not Herod, together with the hardened leaders and scribes of Jerusalem, fall away from Him and stand against Him while He still lay in the manger?... He lept into the drama of human life, as into the darkness of Egypt, to be light and leader, thinker and actor, sacrifice and victor.
- St. Nicholai Velimirovic
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