Today we have the story of the flood and Noah’s ark. It is a wonderful
story. And every time we look at a rainbow we are reminded of God’s promise.
The rainbow—this most beautiful and transient of all things is—as we
have heard, a reminder of God’s covenant; the close bond he established with us
after the great flood.
He makes his promise not only to mankind but also to every living
creature. Respect for creation is not something new; the creator himself
respects the whole of creation more than we ever could.
The rainbow is a wonderful sign of God’s love because of all its
wonderful colours. How does it go? Richard of York gained battle in vain: Red,
orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet. All the colours are there and all
the grades in between. And there are even colours we can’t see. This shows the
breadth of God’s love. His love covers the whole range of existence and even
things we are totally unaware of.
In some ancient cultures the rainbow is a
sign of a weapon as in bow and arrow; they say the rainbow is God’s bow and
lightning is his arrow. The rainbow for them is a sign of anger, but for us it
is a sign of God’s love.
We do enough things to provoke God’s anger,
but in this great covenant God says that he will be merciful to us, he will
hold back his anger. Instead he will love us all the more.
St Paul sees in this water of the flood a
prefigurement of baptism. In baptism we are washed free from our sins. Our
baptism becomes a special sign of God’s love for us individually. By baptism he
singles us out and unites us to himself by a special bond.
We are now in Lent and we think about
fasting and doing penance. We read in the Gospel about Jesus spending time in
the desert—he went there to be alone with God, but he experienced all kinds of
temptations there. He emerged victorious, just as he was to emerge victorious
after his suffering and death.
We don’t need to go into the desert, we are
already in the desert—the world is a desert, it lacks real knowledge of God. With
his help we can overcome the difficulties we experience day by day. It might
not appear so to others, of course. But for us sufferings and difficulties are
part and parcel of being a Christian and we know that they are only a sign of
the victory that is to come.
When we emerge from the desert we will enter
into paradise and it will have all the beauty and more of the rainbow.