A former colleague and friend of mine liked to collect the wooden toys that recalled the images from Noah’s Ark. He had quite a grand collection that he had acquired from parishioners and friends over the years. You can still see them displayed at the Cancer Center at St. Mary Corwin, named after him, the Rev. Roger Dorcy Cancer Center. I don’t know why Fr. Roger was particularly fascinated with the story we find in our first reading today. I suspect it had a lot to do with his own challenges in his cycle of life. Through it all knew the hand of God was with him. The Covenant, the Everlasting Covenant of God, certainly speaks as loud as possible about a relationship of love. Some of you might remember the well-known film called “Schindler’s List” that details the story of Oscar Schindler. Theoriginal title was “Schindler’s Ark” from the book title that the movie came from. Mr. Schindler deliberately used all his entrepreneurial skills with the Nazi’s to obtain Jewish workers for his factory. That factory became the “ark” where he gave them as much protection as was possible in the shadow of the gas chambers. The simple story of Noah probably is based on the memory of some great flood. But it truly is a story about our promise- making God. Out of the deluge of human sinfulness that threatens to plunge the world back into primeval chaos, the God of steadfast love and kindness delivers Noah, his family, and all the living creatures that were with him in the Ark. You see these opening chapters of Genesis point us back to a time when we humans were single minded in our love of God. The focus, as Genesis begins, was the recognition that originally humanity focused on God alone. Then after that, is the misuse of our God given freedom expressed in the account of Adam and Eve’s expulsion from the Garden. This is really a story about people out of focus, a people who repeatedly missed the mark, who strayed from the business of loving God with an entire wholehearted dedication. Moving on to these chapters 6 through 8 of Genesis, we have the richly imaginative story of the great flood. It is the colorful account of how God has worked to return human-kinds focus to God alone. Using this common memory among ancient people of the great flood, the author of Genesis interprets this natural disaster as the devastating consequence of sin, of human-kinds missing the mark. What a fitting reading to have as we begin wholeheartedly this season of Lent!! But let’s also be reminded that the meaning is about hope too. God enters into a covenant with all creation and even sets a rainbow in the clouds as a natural reminder of God’s promise of restoration. God would restore our focus, not by destruction, but by love; namely, in the incarnation of Jesus Christ. Through the coming weeks we will use the symbol found in Genesis 9:13 to build our image of the multicolored rainbow in the sky. The one however to be most reminded by this rainbow is God. In the context of this reading, God makes an ardent (passionate) promise to all humanity, to all generations and to the whole of creation. “Never again will God destroy all flesh with water.” The reminder in some ways is really God’s remembering which becomes a Divine responsibility. Like a divine archer, who hangs in the sky a bow, it is a further reminder as the Book of Sirach teaches us, “Look upon the rainbow and praise the One who made it.” (Sirach 43:11) Under the sign of the rainbow this Lent, we are called to gather, to remember, to hope in God’s promise and mercy. On Ash Wednesday, the words were pronounced upon us as we were signed with the sign of the ashes and called to Lenten mindfulness of the struggle between sin and grace, success and failure. The desert sand is not under our feet but in our hearts. Its grit is the daily irritations and indefinable loneliness we often feel. We all need these Lenten weeks of heightened awareness of the importance of uncluttered spiritual and physical space where we can come to grips with our pain, where we can discover the beauty of God, and our sisters and brothers under the surface sand of our busy lives. Through listening to the Word of God and studying it in these weeks, we may become much wiser about the spiritual baggage that we, as wilderness travelers need to keep or discard in the trek towards Easter. God may make known to us the way of love and truth; showing us the right paths by which we may return, where we have strayed. God calls us to be humble and poor enough to accept the richness of Divine Mercy! Lastly, let us consider what the floodwaters in Noah’s time could not accomplish, that the waters of Baptism did for us. St. Peter’s seized the waters of the Great Flood as prefiguring the Great Flood of Grace that would come to all the disciples with the waters of Baptism. It is not the destructive waters of the flood, but rather the cleansing waters of Baptism that would be the means for making possible for all of us to return to a single minded concern for God and His teachings.Amen. Amen. Msgr. Tom,