CAIRO--MY HUSBAND AND I FLEW INTO THE Egyptian capital last week and, in the Lenten spirit, we pursued the New Testament story about the "Flight into Egypt." It proved a big surprise for us to realize how large the Christian community is in this predominantly Muslim country. Out of a population of about 65 million people, around 18 percent are Christians. It proved a pleasant surprise too that the veneration of St. Joseph, whose feast day was on March 19, is also quite big here. Our hotel in downtown Cairo is close to the big and elegant Parish of St. Joseph run by the Franciscans of the Holy Land. And in Luxor, where we proceeded by overnight train, we stayed at the Hotel St. Joseph. They had a complete schedule of Lenten observance up to Easter Sunday in the Franciscan Church in Luxor.
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But it really shouldn't be surprising that St. Joseph is popular in Egypt. St. Matthew tells us that soon after the birth of Jesus, an angel appeared in a dream to Joseph and told him to bring the Child and his mother to Egypt and stay there until advised otherwise. The reason was that King Herod, feeling threatened by prophecies of the birth of a child in Bethlehem who would be king of Israel, had gone on a rampage and ordered all the eldest children in Bethlehem and surrounding areas killed. Matthew noted that thus was fulfilled what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet: "Out of Egypt I called my son."
Obeying God's message, the Holy Family, according to tradition, stayed in Egypt, for three years. After Herod died, again the angel spoke to Joseph in a dream to take his family back to Israel, but this time to Nazareth in Galilee, instead of to Bethlehem in Judea where Herod's son, Archelaus, had succeeded him.
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In the Egyptian capital, we followed the Holy Family's "flight" and it led us to the Christian part of Cairo, called Coptic Cairo where tradition says they stayed in a cave during their self-exile. That cave has since become the crypt over which was built a church dedicated to St. Sargius and St. Bacchus, who were martyred in 296 AD by Emperor Maximian. This church, said to be the oldest in Egypt, is referred to in various writings some dating back to the 9th century. Coptic Cairo is filled with places of Christian worship, such as the monastery and church named after St. George, the 4th century martyr. Many pilgrims come to pray at the Holy Family's crypt, run by Greek Orthodox priests.
Not far from there is a well where tradition says the Virgin Mary drew water for her family. Elsewhere in the city, there's a sycamore tree beneath which Mary was supposed to have rested during their travel. Not far from this, along the banks of the Nile River, was where, according to tradition, the baby Moses was found by Pharaoh's daughter in a reed basket, whom she then reared as her own child. As the Old Testament tells us, Moses received the Ten Commandments from the Lord near the burning bush (now enclosed within the Monastery of St. Katherine in the Sinai desert). Eventually he led the Israelites across that desert on a 40-year march toward the Promised Land (but he died before they entered it).
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Looking at the map of modern-day Israel and Egypt and how tourists travel by land, sea and air across them, I wondered how the humble carpenter from Bethlehem could have completed the flight to Egypt, which meant crossing a part of the Sinai desert and taking a boat ride across what's now known as the Suez Canal. Ancient papyrus drawings, copies of which we saw in the Coptic churches, depict the Mother and Child atop a donkey, with St. Joseph pulling it amid an unmistakably Egyptian landscape of date palms. But then, as they say, with God nothing is impossible and Joseph must have received a lot of supernatural help to be an accomplice to God's work of redemption.
But did the Holy Family really end up in Coptic Cairo? Archaeologists say that as far back as the 6th century BC, there already was a small Nileside settlement on that site, with many Jewish people gravitating there. One proof is that, as historians note, when Jews fled from Jerusalem after its destruction in 70 AD, some Jews sought refuge in Egypt. It's possible that Joseph had heard of this small Jewish community and decided to settle there. Early in the 2nd century, the Romans established a fortress which they called "Babylon-in-Egypt" and it became a stronghold of Christianity, where at one time more than 20 churches were packed into an area measuring less than 1 sq km, much like old Intramuros before the war.
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It should be interesting to Filipinos who associate Egypt only with Islam that before Islam's arrival in the 7th century, Christianity was the dominant religion. The Egyptians were converted to the new faith by the evangelist St. Mark, who came to the port city of Alexandria in northern Egypt about 61 AD. Despite severe persecution by the Roman emperors, who were said to have regarded the new religion as a potential threat, the Christian faith penetrated the interiors of the country. By the 4th century, Christianity was the official religion of the country and the building of churches in various parts of the country began early in the 5th century. But a disagreement about the human and divine nature of Jesus Christ caused the split of the Egyptian Christians from the Eastern Orthodox Church in the 6th century.
Today, besides the members of the Coptic Church, other Christian denominations, including Roman Catholics, are found in Egypt and all together they number about one million. There are also Anglicans who are under the Episcopal Church in Jerusalem. This shows the healthy respect of the Islamic Egyptians for religious freedom, which continues until today.
