God wants us to be a community, a Church, a family - connected to each other and responsible for each other.
Homily for Our Lady of the Flight into Egypt - 4 February 2024
About 10 years ago I had the privilege of meeting and working with Jules and Catarina Mbombo. Their inspiring story is one that comes to mind on this feast of Our Lady of the Flight into Egypt. They came from the war- torn eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo, and had to flee as refugees. The story of how they travelled east to the Kenyan coast, and then slowly but surely south, through Mozambique and eventually into South Africa at Richards Bay, and then the trip to Cape Town, is heart- breaking. And all this with a new-born son, Pascal. They didn’t have money, and they couldn’t speak the languages of the places they passed through. Happily, after a few years in Cape Town, the United Nations, a part of a refugee programme, moved them to Albuquerque in the United States.
This celebration of our patronal feast today gives us the opportunity to reflect on who we are as Church ... how we fit in, and what we mean to each other and God. The fundamental truth is that God wants us to be a community, a Church, a family - connected to each other and responsible for each other. This call to be a church family is a huge challenge to our western, individualistic mentality.
What holds us together? What is the connection between us? Well, for starters we all belong to the same God who is Father of us all and that makes us brothers and sisters in this great family which is the Church. Secondly, we hold Jesus Christ in common. Each of us is called to walk in friendship with Jesus. And if each of us has Jesus as friend, then we already know the most profound thing about each other; we already have something or rather, someone, profound in common.
Not only do we have Jesus in common, but you could also say we share the same purpose, the same mission. Each of us are meant to be engaged in the mission of the Church, which is to proclaim the Gospel to all peoples, in word and deed, in the different situations of our lives. For most of us, our immediate context is our mission field. And we remember that there are some people with whom we are in contact who only have us as missionaries. If we fail in our missionary work, then they will not hear and see the Gospel; it is on us.
How do we do this mission? How do we proclaim the good news of Jesus to others in our individual mission fields? Firstly, we remember the old saying that we cannot give to others what we haven’t got ourselves. If our missionary identity and work is weak, it is probably because we need re- evangelization ourselves. Each of us needs to continually engage with the person of Jesus, often starting over and over again, so that with an ever- deepening friendship with Jesus, we have something to give to others.
To be a Christian is not about keeping a moral code or following an ideology; it is about relationship. We are in friendship with God, and in relationship with all who belong to God. Today, as we consider the flight of Mary, Joseph, and Jesus into Egypt, in real terms, we can imagine the fear, the hardship, the threat, that these three people whom we love, whom we are in relationship with, must have faced. Our Gospel passage for Mass today gives us a very brief, sanitised account, but if a film were to be made or a novel were to be written, of the journey of this family, we would weep as we watched the film or read the book. Surely, we cannot fail to be moved in our hearts at the memory of the trials of this family.
Imagine the journey from Bethlehem to Egypt. Not only was it close to 700km, but they also travelled by night, in fear, with a new-born baby. In Egypt itself, this young family had to keep moving to avoid the reach of Herod’s spies, and also because they were frequently rejected by the locals. In total, there are 26 locations throughout Egypt where it is believed that the Holy Family passed through or sought refuge during their three-and-a- half years in exile. The places they stayed were later transformed into churches and monasteries.
This local Church of Cape Town is under the patronage of Our Lady of the Flight into Egypt. Today we relive how Joseph had to take Mary and Jesus and flee to Egypt to escape those who wanted to kill the child. So, today we remember that the Holy Family were refugees, asylum seekers; and that they came to Africa. That Our Lady the Refugee is our patron has got to say something about the kind of church and parish we are meant to be.
In the same way that Mary and Joseph literally were entrusted with keeping Jesus alive, we need to keep him alive within ourselves and in others. To keep Jesus alive in us, means keeping in touch with him, nurturing our friendship with him. Any relationship or friendship requires that we spend time with the other, listening to them and talking to them. It is the same with Jesus and his Church. We need to be nourished and strengthened by prayer, by receiving the sacraments, and by listening to his Word.
So, as Christians, we are in relationship with Jesus and with those whom he loves. This double relationship, with Jesus and the people that belong to Jesus, is the essence of what it means to be Church. Remember, Jesus wants us to be a Church, a community, and we cannot be fully Christian apart from a real relationship with those who God has given to us in our community.
The first reading shows us that God is a God of people. Over and over again, in the Old Testament, God is introduced as the God of your Fathers, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. In today’s reading God introduces himself to Jacob as the God of your father, Isaac. So, God is the God of us as a people, and as individuals too. We should be able to substitute our names for Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. As God once, through Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, created a people to be in relationship with him, he created us to be his sons and daughters.
In this same reading we hear that God intervenes for the salvation of his people. He saves Jacob and his family, in their time of trouble. Like the Holy Family they too seek refuge in Egypt. All of us can identify with these troubled times in our lives when we call out to God for help.
This is a profound truth that is reflected in the second reading from the Letter to the Ephesians. We hear that God chose us before all creation. Before the world existed, God already knew us and wanted to create us. Right from the beginning God intended that through his Son, Jesus Christ, we would be adopted as his sons and daughters. The reading says that not only was this God’s plan and purpose from the beginning, but it was also God’s good pleasure that we should be intimately related to him. In other words, God is full of delight that we should be his children and be able to share eternal life with him.
On this patronal feast day of our local Church, we renew our sense of Church. Jesus’ intention is that we should be a community of believers united in mind and heart. His entire mission was to gather together a new people of God – and we are the product of that gathering 2000 years later. We become Church through meeting together and sharing in the Eucharist, through our relationships to each other and our charity. God chooses to gift us as a community and through the community, not only as individuals. Each of us has a responsibility to build up the community.
Today we, and our whole community, want to have hearts that welcome Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. We do this by keeping Jesus alive in us, by deepening our friendship with him and by welcoming and giving refuge to those who also belong to him, those in difficulty, the lonely, the hungry, the lost. We give the Holy Family shelter by helping those who are vulnerable to find God, to find a sense of family and friendship here. We keep Jesus alive by being a welcoming community here, ready to embrace those who come here in the name of Christ and bearing his image.