"God said to Noah and to his sons
with him: "See, I am now establishing my covenant with you.” (Gen 9:8-9)
This morning I began my day by preaching to the little
kids, and I mean little. The class in
charge of our school Mass was the Pre-K 4 children. I was surrounded by 4 and 5 year olds who had
been talking about the story of Noah all week along with the other children
from the congregation. We talked about
different details about Noah’s story.
They began to tell me about all the animals that were on the ark: elephants, hippos, lions, zebras, and, wait
for it, tapeworms! One little kid said
tapeworms! This was not the last I would
hear from this 7 or 8 year old. Later on
when talking about the flood and how all the bad people perished, this same
little boy raised his hand and very seriously said, “I don’t get it. Wouldn’t it have been easier for God to just
send his angels down to whip everybody?”
The assembly lost it. How could I
possibly proceed with a homily after that?
Yet, I tried.
Here’s the thing about Noah: out of all the humans on earth, God chose him
and his family. It was God’s initiative
to establish a covenant with Noah. The
children called it a promise this morning.
God’s promise to us was to never again destroy all mortal beings. He is merciful, and during this Lenten season
he has chosen you to enter into a new relationship with him just as he did with
Noah. The floods washed away all the
evil from the earth during those 40 days.
Now we have another 40 days to wash away the evil from our hearts so
that we can begin anew.
It was not lost on the children that Jesus spent the same
number of days in the desert that Noah spent on the ark while the rain was
coming down. Our short gospel today
tells us of Jesus being driven into the desert by the Spirit to prepare himself
for the mission to come. Once he emerges
from the desert, he brings a simple message which we heard on Ash Wednesday
when we received our ashes: “Repent, and believe in the gospel.” We join Jesus in the desert because we are
aware that we are in need not only of repentance, but that we need to truly believe
in the life-altering message of the gospel.
We journey for 40 days with our eyes firmly fixed on the celebration of
the Easter mysteries where we will encounter new waters. God has chosen us as he chose Noah to do something
extraordinary and to be part of his plan.
It is up to us to respond to this invitation and to take advantage of
the opportunity that Lent provides us to flood our hearts with God’s love and
to wash away all the evil that keeps us from him.
