Our Holy Father Porphyrius, Bishop of Gaza (420)
Great Fast Day 15. Abstention from meat and foods that contain meat. According to liturgical prescriptions, the Divine Liturgy is not celebrated today.
Read
Genesis 6:9-22
Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!
Genesis tells us that Noah was “blameless in his generation.” Now, we may be tempted to mistrust that claim – after all, isn’t Christ the only person without sin (besides his Mother)? And indeed, that is true. But Noah’s “blamelessness” points us to Christ, the only truly blameless one. Noah, in his faithful obedience to the command to build the ark, reminds us how Christ obeyed his father’s will perfectly. The ark, built to save a remnant of creation from the flood, shows how Christ established the Church to preserve his disciples from the violence and corruption of the fallen world. By receiving two of every creature into the ark “to keep them alive,” Noah prefigures how true life comes through Christ. By establishing a covenant with Noah, God prefigures the everlasting covenant that he will establish with us through his Son.
Genesis is the story of how sin progressively came to dominate the world; Noah and the Ark are, in the big picture, only a short interruption to that downward trajectory. But Genesis is also the story of God’s intervention in human history, and Noah’s righteousness is a sign to us, and to the Jewish people who first heard these stories, of an end to sin and alienation. As we read about God’s care for Adam and Eve after the fall, of his protection of Cain after he murdered Abel, of his help to the patriarchs in their unfaithfulness, we too are reminded that God’s grace ultimately, through his sinless Son, brings us back into communion with him.