Noah’s Sacrifice.
Date: Between 1847 and 1853.
(1806–1870).
(Wikimedia Commons)
Text is from “The Liturgical Year”.
By: Abbot Guéranger, O.S.B.
Volume 4.
Septuagesima.
The Church offers to our consideration, during this week of Sexagesima, the history of Noah and the deluge.
Man has not profited by the warnings already given him. God is obliged to punish him once more, and by a terrible chastisement.
There is found out of the whole human race only one Just Man; God makes a covenant with him, and with us, through him. But, before he draws up this new alliance, He would show that He is the Sovereign Master, and that man, and the Earth whereon he lives, subsist solely by His power and permission.
As the ground-work of this week’s instructions, we give a short passage from The Book of Genesis. It is read in The Office of this Sunday’s Matins.
This awful chastisement of the human race by the deluge was a fresh consequence of sin. This time, however, there was found one Just Man; and it was through him and his family that the World was restored.
Having once more mercifully renewed His covenant with His creatures, God allows the Earth to be re-peopled, and makes the three sons of Noah become the fathers of the three great families of the human race.
This is the Mystery of The Divine Office during the week of Sexagesima. The Mystery expressed in today’s Mass is of still greater importance, and the former is but a figure of it.
The Earth is deluged by sin and heresy. But, the word of God, the seed of life, is ever producing a new generation; A race of men, who, like Noah, fear God.
It is the word of God that produces those happy children, of whom the beloved disciple speaks, saying: “They are born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God”.
Let us endeavour to be of this family; or, if we are already numbered among its members, let us zealously maintain our glorious position.
What we have to do, during these days of Septuagesima, is to escape from the deluge of Worldliness, and take shelter in the Ark of Salvation; we have to become that good soil, which yields a hundred-fold from the Heavenly Seed.
Let us flee from the wrath to come, lest we perish with the enemies of God; let us hunger after that world of God, which converteth and giveth life to our Souls [Editor: Psalm XVIII].
With the Greeks, this is the seventh day of their week “Apocreos”, which begins on the Monday after our Septuagesima Sunday. They call this week “Apocreos”, because they then begin to abstain from flesh-meat, which abstinence is observed till Easter Sunday.
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