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FEBRUARY 26<br />
GO INTO THE ARK<br />
“Then the Lord said to Noah, ‘Go into the ark, you and all your household,<br />
for I have seen that you alone are righteous before me in this generation.<br />
Take with you seven pairs of all clean animals, the male and its mate; and<br />
a pair of the animals that are not clean, the male and its mate; and seven<br />
pairs of the birds of the air also, male and female, to keep their kind alive on<br />
the face of all the earth. For in seven days I will send rain on the earth for<br />
forty days and forty nights; and every living thing that I have made I will<br />
blot out from the face of the ground.’ And Noah did all that the Lord had<br />
commanded him.” (Gen 7: 1-5)<br />
This passage from Genesis is read today in my church, on Tuesday of the<br />
third week of Lent. I am reminded of Noah’s ark, which is traditionally<br />
seen to prefigure the Church. We survive the turbulent waters of our<br />
journey to salvation by “going in,” again and again, being gathered into<br />
the community, healing, and restoration that are continuously offered in<br />
grace-filled, ecclesial reality. And then we come out, again and again, to<br />
offer new life to our world.<br />
In the context of our 40-day Lent, I am reminded of the “forty days and<br />
forty nights” of the Great Flood, during which God “blots out” that which<br />
needs to be blotted out in me, and left behind. Today let me once again<br />
embrace Lent’s great “flood” of gifts, offered to me in Tradition, so I can<br />
“come out” renewed, into the light that is coming at the end of this 40-<br />
day period.<br />
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