Monthly Masterpiece - January

Sacred art can help us to contemplate the mysteries of our faith. 
Every month we will look at a different image and the mystery it represents. 


Christ's Entry into Egypt

By Isaac Fanous (1919-2007)
 
In the Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul in Santa Monica, Los Angeles, 1997

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 St Matthew (2 13-15) provides the only Gospel account of Joseph’s dream where the angel appeared to him, telling him to flee with Jesus and his mother to escape Herod’s plan to destroy the child.  Obedient without delay, Joseph took them and withdrew to Egypt where they stayed until Herod’s death.  Thus the flight into Egypt fulfilled the prophecy of Hosea (11,1):  “Out of Egypt I called my son”.
 
In the Coptic Church where the expression “The Entry of Christ into Egypt” is favoured, this episode marks the end of the curse proclaimed by Moses in the time of Exodus and constitutes a founding event, corresponding to the conversion of Egypt.
 
At the dawn of Christianity, Egypt was the cradle of the art of writing icons.  Subsequently abandoned for several centuries, Coptic art has enjoyed a flourishing rennaissance since the second half of the twentieth century, initiated by Isaac Fanous.  The strong stylising of forms is one of the characteristics of this contemporary iconographic movement.
 
It is not unusual to see Coptic representations of the Egyptian journey of the Holy Family, navigating the Nile in a canoe.  Here however, they follow the course of the river, between the papyrus, under the guidance of an angel who indicates with a finger the Virgin and her new-born.  The young mother is sitting on a sumptuously saddled donkey, holding the child wrapped in her veil, both gazing tenderly at each other, inhabited by the secret of mystery they alone share.  The gentle gaze of the donkey, beneath its flattened ears, penetrates with insistence that of the onlooker. With a swift step, staff in hand, Joseph leads it by the bridle.
 
Beyond the palm trees emerges the silhouette of the temple of Heliopolis, with its Obelisk. The Holy family is believed to have passed this way. In the water of the Nile, 4 fish symbolize the 4 evangelists, while 7 lotus flowers prefigure the 7 sacraments which communicate divine life. A sacred ibis, image of Thoth, the God of wisdom in the Pharaonic religion, welcomes with a flutter of wings, the coming of the one true God and Saviour.

                                                                                    Marie Thérèse de Ruffray
 
Jesus, Mary and Joseph knew what it meant to leave their own country and become migrants: threatened by Herod’s lust for power, they were forced to take flight and seek refuge in Egypt (cf. Mt 2:13-14). But the maternal heart of Mary and the compassionate heart of Joseph, the Protector of the Holy Family, never doubted that God would always be with them. Through their intercession, may that same firm certainty dwell in the heart of every migrant and refugee.

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Pope Francis
100th World Day of Migrants and Refugees
January 19 2014 

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