Tuesday of the Fifteenth Week in Ordinary Time

Lectionary: 390

Pharaoh’s daughter came down to the river to bathe, while her maids walked along the river bank. Noticing the basket among the reeds, she sent her handmaid to fetch it. On opening it, she looked, and lo, there was a baby boy, crying! She was moved with pity for him and said, “It is one of the Hebrews’ children.”


The History of Salvation abounds in irony and this story of Moses' deliverance from certain death is typical. The edict of the supreme god/man of Egypt, worshiped by everyone who comes within his August Presence, is flouted  by his daughter and her maids. They cannot resist the whimpering of a baby boy. 

The princess must surely have known who the little girl was who happened to appear as they were pulling the basket out of the reeds, and the Hebrew nurse could only be the child's mother. But royal families, if Shakespeare and his colleagues are to be believed, are awash in winks, nods and secrets; so the baby was raised as an Egyptian -- right under the pharaoh's nose. If he didn't know Joseph, he didn't know Moses either. But he would learn. 

Our faith teaches us to see the Hand of God in small subtle incidents. "Coincidences are God's way of remaining anonymous." While the Powers that Be are marching around, strutting their stuff and daring anyone to defy them, God continues to sustain hope, faith and love among his people. 

Stories leap to mind: 

• Lenin ordered the churches closed but when the old women kept attending Mass with the aging priests he decided it was better not to execute the babushkas. They would die out, he reasoned, and future generations would never know the Catholic religion. But the old women and the old priests kept on praying for seventy years until the Communist regime collapsed and the churches reopened. 
• Japanese Catholics suffered the most barbaric persecution in history. Stripped of their churches and priests, lacking contact with Rome and the outer world, they cherished the Sacraments of Baptism and Marriage and their images of the Blessed Mother until Commodore Perry, with his gunships, reopened Japanese ports to the world. 
• In 1492 Spanish Jews were forced to be baptized or leave Spain. Many were baptized but they practiced the Jewish religion in secret for centuries. Known as Cripto-Jews, some migrated to the southwest United States where, it is said, a few still keep the secret of their Jewish identity. 
• Irish Catholics developed "penal rosaries," ten-beaded chains which disappear into the palm of one's hand when the police appear. They're popular with American drivers nowadays. 

Faith does not disappear because intellectuals and tyrants think it should. Not even well intentioned kindness can suppress it. The Lord continues to demonstrate the courage and tenacity of the human spirit in the persistence of faith.