Virgin mary monastery - Gabal (Mount) Dronka
And so they set forth on the return journey The route they took deviated slightly from the one by which they had come it took them to Mount Dronka, 8 Kms south-west of the city of Assiut, and their blessing of this location was commemorated h. the Christian era by the building of the mountain-top Monastery of Dronka.
Eventually, they arrived at Old Cairo, then Matariyah, and on m Mahamma, retracing more or less their steps on their outward journey across Sinai to Palestine.
Subsequent Biblical history says it all: at the end, they arrived home, Joseph's old house, h. [he small town of Nazareth, in Galilee, in the land of Palestine, from where the message of Christ would, in the fullness of time, be heard.
The whole journey, from the initial flight from Bethlehem to the return to Nazareth lasted over three years. They had covered something like 2000 kms; their means of transport a weak beast of burden and the occasional sail-boat on the Nile. But for much of the way, the delicate Mother and the rugged old Carpenter must
have trudged on foot, enduring the fierce summer heat and the biting winter's cold, suffering the pangs of hunger and the parching affliction of thirst ... Like hunted outlaws. It was a journey of indescribable agony and anguish which the Child Jesus, his Virgin Mother and the Sainted Joseph bore with inner joy, and survived, for the sake of mankind.