You can also listen to the homily here.
A man gets a message from God telling him that there
is about to be a terrible flood but that he is not to be afraid and that God
will save him. Filled with
confidence the man awaits the disaster.
The waters rise and threaten to flood his house. An army truck then arrives and offers
to evacuate him. “No”, he says,
“God has promised to save me. I
will wait on Him.” The waters
continue to rise and he has to move up stairs. A boat arrives and offers to rescue him. “No”, he says, “God
has promised to save me. I will
wait on Him.” The waters continue
to rise and he has to climb into his attic and out onto the roof. A helicopter arrives and a man descends
to him on a cable and offers to take him to safety. “No”, he says, “God has
promised to save me. I will wait
on Him.” The waters continue to
rise and so he drowns. He goes
before the Lord in Heaven and he’s very upset. “Lord,” he says, “you promised to save me and you
didn’t!” “My son,” says God, “I
sent you a truck, a boat and a helicopter. It’s not my fault if you drowned.”
Cork
itself is no stranger to flooding and some parts of the country have seen more
than their fair share. I am sure
that you, like me, have known people who lost their homes to flooding. How quickly the waters rise! How easily whole towns can be swept
away and lives lost by the thousand.
Modern media means that we can access the images of the tsunami that hit
Thailand on St Stephen’s day twelve years ago or the one that hit Japan after
the earthquake in 2011. Ancient mythology preserves many flood stories. They are powerful images of the sudden
and irresistible destruction that a flood can bring. By using the
story of Noah our Lord is using a powerful image with deep meaning.
To understand how our Lord uses this image of Noah and
the flood I must explain the idea of typology. In typology all the major characters and events in the Old
Testament are understood as anticipations, foretastes or types of what God will
do for us in Christ. So Moses the
law-giver is a type of Christ the true lawgiver. King David is a type of Christ the King. Likewise with Melchizedek, Abraham and
the other major characters. In
this use of scripture Noah is a type of Christ the Saviour and the ark is a
type of the Church.
In
our Lord’s retelling of the story of Noah the people were “eating and drinking,
marrying and giving in marriage” (as if marrying were no more significant than
eating or drinking) but they were doing NOTHING MORE – there is no mention of a
place for the Lord. Their whole
lives were consumed with doing their own wills and they ignored the warnings
given to them through Noah until they were destroyed. At the very beginning of the Bible, in the book of Genesis
where Noah’s story is told, the people are said to have conceived nothing but
evil in their hearts. There was no
room for good there anymore to such an extent that even the animals, wild and
tame, were affected. So God
decided to wipe the Earth clean and start afresh. Their minds and souls, their consciences
darkened by the sin of indifference and so they remained blind to their own
corruption and the coming disaster.
Noah was a figure of fun and derision to them. Noah was mad and only a fool would listen to him.
In refusing to listen to Noah the people were refusing
to listen to God speaking through Noah so in refusing to listen to Christ, in
refusing to take the Gospel seriously we are refusing to listen to God
Himself. They did not know until
the flood came and carried them all away.
Sin darkens the mind and blinds us to reality. When we refuse to make time for God and let Him cleanse our
hearts and our lives we think we see and know the truth but we do not and so we
cannot see the danger and avoid destruction.
The flood that we cannot avoid is the flood of death
and judgment. Whether we like it
or not it will overtake us at some point.
For some it will come suddenly, for others there is ample warning, but
it always comes and we cannot avoid it.
We are offered a way to avoid total destruction, an ark to save us, to
carry us over and through the waters of death. Christ is the true Noah, His ark is His Body the Church and
those who take refuge in her are saved.
We take refuge through repentance and conversion, through casting
ourselves on the Lord’s mercy through repentance and confession, through prayer,
abstinence, fasting and giving to the poor.
In saying that one will be taken and another left
Christ means that death and judgment come to us in the ordinary events of our
day and we cannot know when they will strike nor do we know who will live and
who will die, disaster is sudden and takes people in the middle of their daily
lives.
Therefore,
He says to us, stay awake! Stay
awake in the Spirit aware of the demands of discipleship and committed to the
Lord. No one knows what day is set
aside as the Day of Judgment and no prophet, no visionary can tell you. If any claim to know that stay away
from them because they are deluded.
The Lord wants us to pay attention and so he says “Be sure of this!” How many victims of crime would love to
have known in advance so that they could take some action to avoid
suffering! Here we are warned
about death and judgment! So we also must be prepared, spiritually
ready, in a state of grace (free from grave or mortal sin) like soldiers ready
for the call to battle – trained, fed, equipped and psyched up.
We must stand at the ready for He will come. The Lord gives us many chances to
change but not forever. We need to
decide to change and then trust Him to help us whether He comes by truck, boat
or helicopter! Take the help that
comes to you don’t wait for some spectacular miracle. If we do what we can with what we have we need not
fear Him when He comes. He comes
for everyone individually at death. He comes also at particular moments in
history and acts in the world in a clear way but the Day will arrive when He
will come in judgment for the whole world.
How are we to prepare for that day? Well don’t just sit there, do something! Take action to let the Lord draw you
closer to Himself and to others.
Prepare by doing works of mercy, spiritual and corporal. Be merciful to others. But don’t just do things, learn to sit
with the Lord. Prepare by giving
time to prayer and to listening to God’s word. Bring some silence into your day and clear out the
distractions. Even a few minutes a
day given to reading and thinking about a text from the Scriptures (e.g. the
Gospel of the day’s Mass) will bear fruit in time. Time given to praying and meditating on the rosary is
another way – I don’t meant rattling through the Hail Marys with one’s mind far
away but actually keeping each mystery before our mind’s eye and in our
heart. Prepare by making
sacrifices however small and offering them to the Lord in union with His
Sacrifice on the Cross. These are
especially helpful if they benefit others, above all the poor. If you want to celebrate our
Lord’s birth properly, with real joy, then make time for God and for
others. The time we give to God
and our neighbour we will get back a hundred times over. Don’t let yourself be robbed but heed
the Lord’s warning. Get yourself
right with God and your neighbour and when we calls you will have nothing to
fear. As it said in the opening
prayer of this Mass we will run
out to greet Him our hands full of the good deeds we have done.
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