Wednesday of the Sixth Week in Ordinary Time

Lectionary: 337

Never again will I doom the earth because of man
since the desires of man’s heart are evil from the start;
nor will I ever again strike down all living beings, as I have done.
As long as the earth lasts,
seedtime and harvest,
cold and heat,
Summer and winter,
and day and night
shall not cease.”

 S aint Peter, in his second letter, amended the Lord's promise to Noah with an unexpected proviso:  

Know this first of all, that in the last days scoffers will come [to] scoff, living according to their own desires and saying, “Where is the promise of his coming? From the time when our ancestors fell asleep, everything has remained as it was from the beginning of creation.”

They deliberately ignore the fact that the heavens existed of old and earth was formed out of water and through water by the word of God; through these the world that then existed was destroyed, deluged with water. The present heavens and earth have been reserved by the same word for fire, kept for the day of judgment and of destruction of the godless.

And so a deluge of fire entered our collective imagination. (And Internet gaming.) The First Apostle may also be referencing Psalm 21:9-12. 

Your hand will find all your enemies;

your right hand will find your foes!

At the time of your coming

you will make them a fiery furnace.

Then the LORD in his anger will consume them,

devour them with fire

Even their descendants you will wipe out from the earth,

their offspring from the human race.

Though they intend evil against you,

devising plots, they will not succeed. 

(This passage is not found in the Liturgy of the Hours. See Tuesday Evening, week one.)

In the 1950's I readily joined my classmates as the school conducted drills for a possible nuclear attack. We hid under our desks. It was a ludicrous exercise but it made us aware of a danger that remains as near as it was seventy years ago. One of America's preeminent authors, Cormac McCarthy, has added his own dour scenario of a post-apocalyptic landscape in his book, "The Road." He offers little hope. If we have skirted the danger so far, it will remain an ever-present threat into the indefinite future. We will never forget how to build atomic and hydrogen bombs. Has the world ever seen an effective weapon we did not use? 

A secular society scoffs at the biblical legend of Noah's Flood, but it cannot so easily dismiss the deluge of fire we intend to use when the situation calls for it. It prepares for the worst and vaguely hopes it will not happen. 

Faith does not invest in weapons; neither carrying nor owning them. Peaceful people would rather be killed than kill anyone. Faith envisions God's Kingdom, and Hope dares to plan for it with every form of Charity, and many forms of legislative action in city halls, and state and federal capitals. We have read in the Bible of universal deluges; and of the end of the world; and we know it will happen. We want it to end in God's time, and not ours.