Thursday, March 31, 2005 Lenten Fast
Innocent, Enlightener of Alaska and Siberia
6th Hour: Isaiah 11:10-12:2 1st Vespers: Genesis 7:11-8:3 2nd Vespers: Proverbs 10:1-22
Genesis 7:11-8:3 LXX, especially vss. 16, 17 and 24: "And they that entered went
in male and female of all flesh, as God commanded Noah....And the water was raised over the earth an hundred and fifty
days. And God remembered Noah...as many as were with him in the ark." God saved from death Noah and all who were
with him in the ark. God saves the Faithful in Christ from eternal death through the Baptismal Mystery.
By embracing Christ through His Church, Christians sever themselves from the swirling flood of death all around them, die
with the Lord, and receive His gift of the new Life. As Father Alexander Schmemann says of Baptism: "It is the
representation not of an idea but of the very content and reality of the Christian faith itself: to believe in Christ is to 'be
dead and to have one's life hid with Him in God' (Col. 3:3)." Baptism hides us away from the world, shuts us up safely in
the ark of life, and introduces us to the new life in Christ. Let us examine this Mystery.
"The water prevailed exceedingly upon the earth, and covered all the high mountains....And there died all flesh that moved
upon the earth" (vss. 19,21). However, all that perished then were "dead" long before the waters came, for biological death
is not the totality of death. The people of Noah's generation held the same, dominant heresy that darkens the mind of
modern, secular man - denying the spiritual dimension of life and wholly investing everything in physical existence. What
is the result? Listen to Father Schmemann: "spiritual death...fills the entire life with 'dying' and, being separation from
God, makes man's life solitude and suffering, fear and illusion, enslavement to sin and enmity, meaninglessness, lust and
emptiness. It is this spiritual death that makes man's physical death truly death."
By choosing to live life on completely different terms, Noah elected to die in relation to his neighbors, his acquaintances,
the relatives in his family, and the members of his wife's family and the families of his sons' wives. He left them all and
their delusion. As each of us, upon whom the hand of Christ has been laid through His Priesthood, "hath been found
worthy to flee unto [Christ's] Holy Name, and to take refuge under the shelter of [His] wings," so may our gracious Lord
"remove far from [us our] former delusion." For the sake of Him Who loved us while we were yet in our delusion, let us
go on loving those who choose death over life. But let us continue to choose the Ark of salvation and the life in Christ
now, long before physical death.
Because Noah was a righteous man, pleasing to God, he was found worthy of salvation, to build the ark, and to be delivered
from the Flood. His life of silent obedience revealed a man who passed from death to life long before the flood came, a
man who was truly united to God. Beloved of the Lord, may the portrait of a true Baptismal initiate given by Nicholas
Cabasilas describe the manner in which each of us lives: "Fleeing from darkness he runs toward the light and turns to the
east to seek the sun. Being freed from the tyrant's hands he worships the King, and having condemned the usurper he
recognizes his lawful Master. He prays that he may become subject to Him and serve Him with all his soul."
Like Noah, we have been called by God into the Ark of the Church, shut in with His own hand. Most of all, God
remembers us because we are united to Him. God made Himself man to unite us to Himself. Now as Cabasilas says, "we
are really members of Christ, and this is the result of Baptism. The splendor and beauty of the members come from the
Head, for they would not appear beautiful without being attached to the Head." Let us cling to Him Who glorifies us.
Keep us in Thy sanctification; deliver us from the evil one, and preserve our souls in purity that we may please Thee in
every deed and word and be heirs of Thy heavenly kingdom.
