Continued 👇🏾
The Mystery of Exile and Deliverance
✍🏾In Revelation 12:6, Saint John speaks of the exile of our Lady and, symbolically, of the Church:
“And the woman fled into the wilderness, to a place prepared by God, that she should be stayed there for a thousand two hundred and sixty days.”
This number 1260 days, or 42 months, or three years and six months represents the length of the Virgin’s exile.
✍🏾As our Holy Fathers explain, the fact that these days are numbered shows that the sufferings of the righteous are temporary and measurable. Persecution and hardship for the sake of God will pass away, but the heavenly reward is eternal and without end. The same symbolic number 42 appears again in the lives of the saints who endured trials before receiving glory.
✍🏾The exile of Israel, recorded in the Book of Exodus, lasted forty-two years. Those who pleased God among them entered the land of Canaan after their trials, while their persecutors Pharaoh and his army perished in judgment.
✍🏾The prophet Elijah was also exiled for forty-two months, fleeing from the wicked rulers Ahab and Jezebel because he proclaimed the word of God and defended the poor. Elijah’s suffering ended with his glorious ascent to heaven, but his persecutors died in disgrace, their memory erased from among the living.
✍🏾Likewise, our Lady the Virgin Mary and her beloved Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, endured exile and persecution under Herod’s cruelty. Yet after Herod’s death, they returned safely to Nazareth in Galilee. The persecutor died in torment.
✍🏾Therefore, as members of God’s family, we must also become faithful witnesses of truth. When the time comes for us to stand for righteousness, we should accept persecution and suffering with joy, just as our holy fathers did.
✍🏾For persecution is not merely a burden it is a sacred transition, a path that leads us from the trials of earth to the everlasting peace of heaven.
The End of Our Lady’s Persecution and Her Return to Galilee
On the 6th day of hidar each year, at the end of the month of Tsige, we remember the moment when Our Lady, the Holy Virgin Mary, together with her beloved Son, Saint Joseph the Righteous, and Saint Salome, found rest after their persecution and suffering at the hands of Herod. They rested in a place called Debre Kusqam.
As the Evangelist Saint Matthew records:
“When Herod died, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt, saying, ‘Rise, take the Child and His mother, and go to the land of Israel, for those who sought the Child’s life are dead.’”(Matthew 2:20)
We therefore remember that the elderly Joseph returned from exile in Egypt with the Holy Virgin Mary whom Salome faithfully assisted and with her beloved Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.
✍🏾 The day of Our Lady’s persecution and the end of her exile was known to God with absolute certainty. Yet, as we see in the lives of the saints, when one persecution ends, another often follows. Their lives are a ladder of glory, upon which they ascend from one trial to another, and from glory to glory.
✍🏾 Each hardship they overcome brings them closer to divine perfection. There is endless grace for those who conquer persecution through faith. When the saints triumph over the devil’s assaults, even the angels in heaven rejoice, for Satan is defeated by their endurance.
The Mother of God, the Holy Virgin Mary, never displeased God during her persecution. By her patience and prayer, she overcame the evil one. Her beloved Son, Jesus Christ, rested her in Debre qusquam, which symbolizes the Kingdom of Heaven. Although Debre Kusqam is not itself a heavenly place, it is a model of divine rest a reflection of the eternal peace promised to the faithful.
After this blessed rest, Our Lady experienced four of her five great sorrows, continuing to bear witness through her suffering and obedience.
Continues 👇🏾