Another Flooding Is Coming
Homily on Friday, 6th Week in OT, 21 February 2025, FSpIF Chapel, Talamban
Our liturgy these past days has been presenting to us a God who loves us with a bottomless unlimited love.
Yesterday’s first reading showed God establishing a new order in creation after the great flood has purified the earth of all the evil that has caused its corruption. He even set up a rainbow in the sky as a sign and reminder of his fidelity to the covenant which he had made with Noah representing humankind. Sad to say that covenant was broken again and again not by God, but by the people who continued to persist in their sins. In fact the first reading today presents a people wanting to equal God by attempting to build a tower that was super high that it was already reaching the clouds. Unfortunately that tower fell when the people started to speak different languages and could no longer understand each other.
This brings us to the Gospel passage of today showing us Jesus calling his disciples to deny themselves and follow him even when it entails suffering and death.
But to understand this better, we need to revisit what was proclaimed yesterday: Jesus being acknowledged by Peter as the longed-for Messiah. Jesus was the One sent by God to establish a new covenant with humankind, not by flooding the earth with a devastating and purifying deluge, but by flooding the hearts of people with his own precious blood shed on the cross for the forgiveness of sins.
Moreover, what God did in the time of Noah was actually just a prefiguration of what he would later do through Jesus’ passion, death and resurrection. And this is truly something so wonderful for us to behold. That is why we can’t but rise up very early every morning so we can gather around the altar at this time when the sunrise overcomes the darkness of night. Here in this most sacred place, we join our hearts and our voices together to offer to the Father the Eucharistic sacrifice which makes present for us the New Covenant God had made with us, sealed with the most precious blood of Christ, his only begotten Son. This Eucharist is the new rainbow that reminds us of the Good News, that is, God is faithful to his covenant of love forever.
Truly God loves us with a bottomless and “unli” love. We on our part are called to share in this by being ready to serve and even to suffer for Him and for each other. It is only in this way that the world can be flooded again, not anymore by a devastating deluge that hit the earth in Noah’s time, but this time with the shedding of our own blood in union with that of Jesus on the cross for the conversion of sinners.
May our participation in this Eucharist empower us to truly share in God’s “unli” and bottomless love everyday. GiGsss!
