Wednesday February 19, 2003 Homily by Fr. Robert Altier Sixth Week in Ordinary Time
Reading (Genesis 8:6-13,
20-22) Gospel (St. Mark 8:22-26)
In the first
reading today, we see that as Noah comes forth from the ark after the waters of
the flood have receded the very first thing he did was to build an altar to the
Lord. And then he took from every single clean animal and every clean bird and
he offered sacrifice to the Lord. One would, of course, naturally assume that
Noah (being a righteous man and recognizing after having been on the ark all
this time and all of life at that point was destroyed except those few people
and the animals that were on the ark) is going to be very grateful to the Lord
for his life. But the very first thing
– that is the part we need to see – the very first thing that he does is offer
sacrifice to the Lord. God was number one in his life; that is what it is to be
righteous, to be just in the eyes of God.
Now beyond this, we
then see the Lord (smelling the sacrifice that Noah had offered) make a promise,
which is a very wonderful promise, that never again will He doom the whole
earth because of man, recognizing that even though He created us to be very
good, we are fallen, sinful creatures and that from the heart of man comes
sometimes the most unfortunate of thoughts and desires. And so God says that He
will never doom the earth again as long as it remains. At the very end of the
earth, obviously, it is all going to pass away; but it is not going to pass
away in water, but in fire. As we will probably see tomorrow, the rainbow that
God promises is a sign that the earth will never be destroyed in a flood again.
It will be in fire at the end but He will not destroy all of humanity ever
again. Our Lady, at Akita, said that fire will fall from the sky killing the
greater part of humanity. The Prophet Zechariah says that one-third of humanity
will be saved through the fire. So there is, somewhere in the future, going to
be a rather massive purification coming upon the earth, but it looks like
two-thirds of humanity – not all of humanity except for eight people, as was in
the ark – will be killed. And then the Lord tells us that as long as the earth
lasts there will be winter and summer and seedtime and harvest and so on. Once
again, we have that promise from the Lord that until the end of the world the
seasons are going to remain, that things will continue on until the very end.
For ourselves,
again, we need to recognize the end of the world is nowhere near, but there is
purification on the horizon somewhere and we need to be prepared for that. We
need to know that it is not going to be the end. But we need, once again, to
look at our own priorities and to learn from someone like Noah, who found favor
in the eyes of God because he was just. Our Lady, at Akita, reminded us that
everyone who is in the state of mortal sin will die – everyone in the state of mortal sin will die
– and some who are in the state of grace also. But every single person in the
state of mortal sin will die. Every person who is not justified in Christ,
everyone who is not made righteous (having sins forgiven and being in the state
of grace) will not survive what is coming. And we know that in order to go to
Heaven one must be in the state of grace at the moment of death, so it is not a
pleasant thought.
So first we need to
make sure that we remain righteous, even if not perfectly righteous as Noah
was, we at least need to make sure that we remain in the state of grace, that
we remain justified before the Lord. And then we need to make sure that we are
putting God as the top priority in our lives. When we see what the Lord has
done for us, we need to put Him first. Perhaps we are like the blind man from
the Gospel; at this point we do not see very clearly. He saw people looking
like trees and walking; he did not see them distinctly and clearly. We are not
perfect; we do not have perfect righteousness as yet, and so we do not see
everything as clearly as perhaps we would like, but at least we can see. Maybe
things are a little foggy, but we can see that there is trouble on the horizon
and we can see that we need to keep ourselves in the state of grace. And then
we need to trust in the Lord, so that as He continues to purify us, our sight –
internally, that is – will become more and more clear, more and more distinct,
so that not only will we be able to understand and see God’s Will more
perfectly in our lives, and not only will what we are trying to do now (that
is, trying to be righteous and trying to put God first) be the case, but when
we are fully righteous, when we can see clearly and distinctly, then it will be
that God will truly be the top priority in our life and that everything will be
the way it should be. We will have achieved that holiness for which God has
created us and which He desires for us. We will no longer see in a vague and
foggy way, but we will see clearly and distinctly. We will know God’s Will and
we will have Him as number one in our lives the way we are supposed to. That is
the purpose of our creation. And when we see God beginning a re-creation on the
earth, we need to recognize that that is what He continues to do in our souls
when we go to Confession, when we receive Communion, when we pray; we build up
the grace within our souls, we are re-created, and we begin to see more
clearly.
* This text was
transcribed from the audio recording of a homily by Father Robert Altier with minimal editing.