Homily for the Solemnity of Our Lady of the Flight of Egypt

“Out of Egypt I have called my Son.”

Who is the Son whom the Father called?

Of course, we first think of Jesus. After the visit of the Magi, Joseph took the child and his mother and fled into Egypt. They escaped the violence of Herod and remained there until his death. Then they returned. Saint Matthew shows us that in this the Scripture was fulfilled: “Out of Egypt I have called my Son.”

But this is not the only meaning of this text.

When the prophet Hosea first wrote these words, he was not speaking about Jesus. He was speaking about Israel: the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob who went down into Egypt during a time of famine. That place of refuge became a place of slavery. Generation after generation lived under oppression, until the Lord acted and called Israel out of Egypt.

Hosea’s words reveal not only God’s saving power, but something even more important: God is a Father to his people. He relates to Israel as a father to a son.

So this single sentence already holds two stories: the story of Israel, and the story of Jesus. And these stories are not separate. To see their connection, we need to recognise that Jesus’ presence in Egypt is more than a historical detail; it is deeply symbolic.

For Israel, Egypt was not only a country. It became a symbol of slavery, suffering, fear, and long memory of pain. Because of this, Jesus’ entry into Egypt was not only a matter of geography. In going there, he entered into all that Egypt had come to represent: bondage, suffering, and the shadow of death.

While the Incarnation shows us that the Son of God shared our humanity, Jesus’ entry into Egypt shows us something more: that God also enters our brokenness—everything that is wounded, disordered, and beyond our control. He does not stand outside our condition. As St Paul wrote, he became “like us in all things but sin”.

And here the Scripture opens even further.

If Israel is called God’s son, and Jesus is the Son called out of Egypt, then in Jesus, this word is also spoken to us. Through faith and baptism, we too are named sons and daughters. Even when we are bound by sin or fear, God does not stop being our Father. He continues to call us—through Scripture, through the saints, and by his grace—out of our own Egypt and into the life of his Church.

Once we see ourselves as children, whom God is leading, another question naturally follows: how are we to remember the place from which he has called us?

It is worth reflecting on how Israel related to Egypt after entering the Promised Land?

They did not try to forget it. Every year, at the Passover, they remembered. They recalled their slavery, their deliverance, and the mercy of God who had saved them. This memory was not meant to reopen wounds, but to open the space for thanksgiving, the Greek word for which is “eucharist”.

So it is with us. Through baptism and confession, God does not erase our history; he redeems it. The places of bondage become the places where his mercy is known, and from which we give thanks and praise to God our Father.

And now all of this becomes very concrete in the Eucharist.

In a few moments, many of us will come forward to receive the Eucharist. Some of us are still, in different ways, in our own Egypts—still in habits we have not broken, fears we do not know how to name, wounds we try to hide. And yet Jesus comes to us. He enters our lives, our weakness, our need. He gives himself to us so that we might truly become sons and daughters of God, and know God not as a distant power, but as His Father and ours.

And there are also some among us who are not yet able to come forward in this way—those who are preparing, those who are being led, step by step, into the life of the Church. Each of you, too, are not outside of this mystery. The same Jesus who gives himself in the Eucharist is already at work in your lives, already calling you, already drawing you out of Egypt, toward communion.

In this sacrament, Jesus not only comes to us; he also calls us. He calls each of us by name to leave Egypt: to leave what binds us, to leave what breaks us, and to be drawn into communion—with him, and with one another.

Let us hear these words as if describing each of us:

“Out of Egypt I have called my Son.” Amen.