AS THE WATERS COVER THE SEA

A MESSAGE FOR SEXAGESIMA

Our Shrovetide continues this week, drawing us inexorably closer to the season of Lent, with its penance and fasting.  During this time of preparation, we experience the inward struggle as our soul begins to reassert its supremacy over the body, and our body responds by reminding us of all the “good” things we’ll be missing once Lent begins. 

Ultimately, the choice is ours whether to obey these illusory deceits of the body, or to rise to the promptings of grace.  This week’s scripture readings at Matins remind us of the consequences of our decision.  They tell how most of our early ancestors followed their own will with its carnal appetites and pleasures, and ended up being engulfed in the Great Flood, “as the waters covered the sea.”  The same story recounts also how Noah and his family did God’s bidding, ignoring the prodding of their fallen nature and the peer pressure of their fellow-men, and how they built an Ark that would carry them to salvation.  Finally, after forty days and forty nights of rain, they would build an altar to God and give thanks for their deliverance, as the rainbow of the old covenant appeared in the sky, signifying that man was once more at peace with God.

God’s glory was proclaimed in that Great Flood.  It showed his power and his justice, and these alone should make us tremble as we draw ever nearer to his judgment.  But most of all, those forty days and forty nights of destruction showed his mercy, as mankind was saved from total destruction, and the family of Noah was delivered from the iniquities of mankind, to resurrect the human race after its chastisement.  Like the Rosary, Noah’s Flood shows us that glory must be preceded by sorrow and suffering, that death must come before resurrection, that penance must be done if we wish to be shown mercy and forgiveness.

Only a week and three days remain before Ash Wednesday.  We need to solidify our determination, firmly resolving that our Lent will be one deserving of God’s mercy.  We must remind ourselves that we are dust, and unto dust we will return.  The pleasures of life are nothing but illusions and vanity and dust.  God permits them to remind us of the greater happiness that will be ours if we forego our attachment to them in this life.  Nearer and nearer draws the time when we must commit definitively to submit ourselves to God’s purpose, that the earth may be filled with the glory of God, as the waters cover the sea.

Father Hall