Home Study of Medaille

THE MYSTERY OF THE FLIGHT INTO EGYPT

The flight into Egypt gives the devout person who meditates on it a noble motive for suffering courageously through the emptying of self, all possible wrongs, abuses and contradictions.

"Fifthly, if you deign
to give me the grace,
I desire to profit greatly
from the first persecution
you endured
and your flight into Egypt.

You were no sooner born, good Jesus,
than you were
cruelly persecuted.

Although you had power to destroy
your persecutors
and reduce them to the nothingness
from which you had drawn them,
you endured
their attacks
with divine patience.

to escape their violence,
you chose a way
full of humility,
and caused your foster father
to be warned by an angel
to carry you to Egypt
into a place of exile,
where,
with your dear mother
and your foster father,
you were to live for seven years
in extreme poverty.

O inexpressible gentleness.
O patience.
O unbounded goodness.

Grant that, like you,
I may be able to endure
every kind of persecution
without complaining
or murmuring
and even without interior disquiet.
May I endure each one
with resignation.

Let me receive them
as effects
of divine Providence
on my behalf.

What losses I incurred in my past life
Because I did not endure
in this spirit
the contradictions
I met."

(Writings of Jean-Pierre Médaille, p. 117)