Selected Sermons, Volume 3

151 A Second on the Same

SERMON 151 A Second on the Same1 oday’s reading has troubled our hearts, shaken us in the depths of our being,2 and has made us wonder if we were hearing correctly. An angel of the Lord, it says, appeared to Joseph in a dream, saying: “Get up, take the boy and his mother, and flee to Egypt” (Mt 2.13). When he was born, virginity did not resist him, reason proved no obstacle, and nature did not thwart him. Therefore, what power, what force, what peril could prevail over him so as to compel him to flee? Take the boy and his mother, and flee to Egypt. It would have been more reverent to say: “Make your way to Egypt,” so as to indicate a journey, but not a flight; something willed, not something done out of necessity; motivated by a considered judgment , not fear; a free human act, at least, if not a divine one. But now instead, a flight is mandated, mandated from heaven, mandated through an angel, so that fear seems to have taken hold of heaven before taking hold of earth.3 2. Take the boy and his mother, and flee to Egypt. Flee to Egypt, depart from your own people to foreigners, to the sacrilegious from the holy ones, from your Temple to the shrines of demons, to the land of idols from the region of the saints. Judea is so insufficiently extensive, the whole wide world is so confining, the Temple’s sanctuary cannot hold them, the multitude of priests is of no avail, and the countless number of relatives cannot conceal them, that only the profane land of Egypt is conducive for hiding the Deity. 257 1. This sermon on the Lord’s flight into Egypt, as with Sermon 150 but in a different year, was preached shortly after Christmas Day. See Sermon 150, n. 1. 2. For references to similar reactions, see Sermon 127.1 and n. 3. 3. Much of what is contained in this section is also found in Sermon 150.6. The situation is so urgent, and so there is no time at all to consider the modesty of the Virgin, the weariness of the Mother , her sexual purity, Joseph’s danger, the anguish of their being so far away, their separation from all their family, and, hardest of all, that they who were Jews were about to live abroad among gentiles, with whom they have nothing in common, or rather, who suffer overwhelming devastation4 because they transgress the Law. 3. O how difficult! Living abroad is hard enough even among fellow-citizens and relatives. The one who experiences someone else’s home thinks with longing about what his own home is like. And what has happened to that statement: “Lord, you have become a refuge for us,”5 as well as: “God is our refuge and strength”?6 If the refuge flees, if the strength is afraid, if the protection goes away, what life, hope, security, or defense is there? One widow was enough for Elijah against the plots of a free king;7 all of Judea was not enough for Christ against the threats of the captive Herod.8 Elijah consumed with fire from heaven those who had been sent to him;9 Christ was saved only by fleeing.10 Let this suffice as the extent of our complaints about Christ’s flight. 4. Brothers, that Christ fled11 had to do with a mystery, not fear; it was the liberation of the creature, not a peril to the Creator ; it was a matter of divine power, not human frailty; of concern was not the death of the Creator, but the life of the world. For why would the One who had come to die flee death? Christ would have struck down any possibility for our salvation, if he had permitted himself to be struck down as a little child.12 Christ had come in order to confirm by example what he had taught by precept, to do himself what he had commanded to be done, and to show that things which seemed impossible when they were heard were possible when they were seen. 258 ST. PETER CHRYSOLOGUS 4. Literally, “shipwreck” (naufragium). 5. Ps 89 (90).1. 6. Ps 45.2 LXX; Ps 46.1. 7. See 1 Kgs 17.8–16. 8. See Mt 2.13. 9. See 2 Kgs 1.9–12. 10. See Mt 2.13–15. 11...