Matthew’s language is blunt, powerful and direct. God’s messenger, the angel, tells Joseph what to do, and Joseph takes action accordingly. He must protect his family from harm.

We are dealing with survival here. Life, at its most basic level, is always about survival.

Sometimes night and darkness are seen as the enemy, but here they are forces that aid survival. Did Jesus, perhaps, learn a thing or two about survival, about using the night and darkness as cover, from the flight into Egypt?

As I began to write this article, I remembered a woman’s eyes filling with tears as she told my wife and me that her parents saved her from Nazi persecution by selling everything they had in order to send her to safety in Palestine, while they themselves could not escape and so were destroyed.

Another woman, a friend, told me a harrowing tale of flight from Nazi persecution with her family, by night, from Germany into Belgium. She was then only a child, but she still remembers the terror she felt as they made their way through a forest with a stranger as their guide — someone their father had bribed. She described the anxiety, waiting, wondering whether the guide would help or betray them; not understanding why their lives were being shattered.

We all know such stories. They are, sadly, part of our lives and times. Tyranny, hatred and lust for power make them so.

Perhaps that is why one such story, the story of the child Anne Frank, invades our hearts, engages our sympathies and raises disturbing questions. Anne and her family fled to seeming safety, but in the end she was not saved. Why? Where was God?

The story of another child who was saved from almost certain death — Elian Gonzalez — also aroused so much sympathy, for no matter where we stood on the political issues we could still see that Providence was at work in his rescue.

Life is always about survival. That stark fact is always there, staring us in the face. And life is about more than mere survival. It is also about paying attention to those flashes of insight that come to us, sometimes in dreams, of doing what we know in our hearts we ought to do, even when the way ahead is not clear. It’s about being resourceful. It’s about trusting that God will provide. It’s about moving ahead in the darkness, step by cautious step, with God’s help.

And the Church, in laying before us this stark story of flight and survival, reveals just a little more about “the mystery of the Word made flesh.”

Joseph and Mary needed to save the child from Herod’s persecution just as other men and women before and after them had to struggle to save their loved ones. Maybe someone had to be bribed to help get them out of Judea and into Egypt. Maybe they felt fearful whenever they saw a man in uniform. Maybe they couldn’t really be sure that the people they asked to help them would help them. Maybe there was the frustration that comes from dealing with strange customs or learning a new language.

Maybe the memories of that Flight into Egypt and its aftermath left indelible scars on their souls.

Wherever these speculations may take us, faith challenges us to believe and to live consistently in the belief that the Christ knew in his own body and spirit what we and our brothers and sisters throughout the ages have also experienced in the unfolding drama of life and survival.

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