It happens to us all.  A harsh quip back to someone who has hurt us, an angry rant about a situation beyond our control, the storming out of a room to count to ten before resuming a heated conversation.  It happens to us all, and none more so than me. It’s what we redheads are known for, isn’t it? Our fiery tempers.

As a child my sister (also a redhead) and I would fight at every moment possible, especially when left at home alone.  She’d play her music too loudly, I’d storm outside to cut the power supply to the whole house, she’d lock me out, I’d be left banging on the door to be let back in, usually in tears of frustration and resentment that I was given a sibling like her.  Our younger brother could be found cowering in his own room at the other end of the house trying to escape the insanities.

What did we achieve in all that anger?  To be sure, no one won. Neither of us felt residually better as a result of our actions.  All that we achieved were cheap shots that hurt each other and contributed to the demise of our sororal relationship, to say nothing of our brother who had to endure this on an all too regular occasion.  As the elder of the two, I should have known better so it was probably fitting that it was I who’d end up locked outside. It was, after all, my choice to react to her provocation in the way that I did. Instead of being in control of my involvement in the situation and removing myself from the offending act, I tried to control the situation and was rewarded for my contrariness by finding myself in an even worse position than to begin with.  

The same thing happens when we choose defiantly to act against God’s will, we only hurt ourselves and eventually, if we continue, we end up banishing ourselves from his kingdom.  What’s worse is that we hurt others in the process. Take Herod, for example, the antagonist in the story of the second sorrow of Mary, the exile to Egypt (Mt 2:13-23). Rather than rejoicing at the news of the birth of a messiah he reacted in fear and sought to kill the threat to his throne of Israel.  When his plot was thwarted by the evasiveness of the wise men sent to provide him with details of the infant, Herod, “in a furious rage,” (Mt 2:16) ordered the slaughter of all male children under the age of two in the region in an effort to achieve his desired outcome. Herod, in his hardness of heart, not only took the lives of thousands of innocent children (remembered and celebrated by the Church each year on 28 December) and caused unimaginable suffering to all their families, but he gained nothing from it. The child escaped and lived, and Herod, all he had done was unwittingly enhance the cause of his enemy. 

Jesus, the messiah whose life ends by his dying for the sake of others, started his life by others dying for him and we, the Church, weep for them along with Rachel who mourned without comfort for the loss of her children (Mt 2:18). No one weeps for the loss of Herod. He is remembered as nothing but a cruel tyrant who built up material glory around him that fell to decay in the years after his death. (Contrast that to the child he sought to kill who sought no worldly glory but to whom all eternal glory is possessed). To those lost children, and for us who have been baptised into the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, eternal life is offered that we may join God in his heavenly kingdom to live in beatitude faced with his unrivalled glory.  Cutting oneself off from Truth and Goodness spells death, uniting with Christ in love is life itself.

Forewarned by an angelic messenger, Mary fled with her child and husband to the land of Egypt.  It cannot have been an easy instruction to follow. Are callings from God ever absent of a requirement to abandon our own inhibitions and desire for control?  But who better to model willing and humble obedience than Mary whose fiat at the Annunciation models for us the quintessential example of such a disposition? Here again she places her trust in God even though he tells her to run to the place where her ancestors had been enslaved for 430 years (Ex 12:40).  St Thomas Aquinas helps us understand that in so doing, she, bearing the Son of God in her arms, brought enlightenment to that place of darkness.  For even though the Egyptians angered God when they pursued the children of Israel (yes, God gets angry too sometimes!), he is mindful of his mercy in his anger and granted them this occasion to serve the Lord.  

When we embrace the will of God and don’t succumb to the temptations of stubbornness or retribution, we more often than not have to choose the path which is the least attractive at the outset.  But it is this path that we enter, through the narrow gate (Mt 7:13-14) that offers the greatest rewards if we have the courage to take it. It’s a path that requires an alignment of the will to that of the Father, in the way that Jesus models for us on the cross. 

We cannot know what it is exactly that the Father wills but we do know that he desires more than anything for our ultimate happiness and he knows that this can only be achieved through complete union with him, which we attain by acting in charity and willing what he wills.  Undoubtedly Mary would have set off to Egypt without any concept of why God was sending her back to the place of exile for the Israelites. It was the middle of the night, it was a rapid flee in protection of the one thing she held most dear, and it was away from her home. Yet she had the courage to do so because she trusted in God.  In so doing, she allowed for the mercy of God to be made manifest to the Egyptians who were given the opportunity for redemption and to be of service to the infant Christ in an hour of need.

God is not the cause of evil in the world, but he does not let it have the final say.  Trust in this and not the niggling voice egging you on to retaliate in the heat of the moment to the evils before you, as hard as that may be (it’s even harder for us redheads). Redemption and eternal life are offered to those who charitably will what God wills despite whatever misfortune he may allow to happen so that right order may be restored.  The temporary troubles of Mary allowed for the possibility of the redemption of a whole nation of people just as our temporary troubles, when suffered in the same abandonment to divine will that Christ did on the cross, bring untold good to the world, and eternal life for ourselves.

~ Fiona Bradley

Fiona Bradley is a PhD candidate at the Australian Catholic University researching the role of charity in the soteriology of St Thomas Aquinas.