Gospel: Lk 17:26-37
JESUS said to his disciples: “As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be in the days of the Son of Man; they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage up to the day that Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all. Similarly, as it was in the days of Lot: they were eating, drinking, buying, selling, planting, building; on the day when Lot left Sodom, fire and brimstone rained from the sky to destroy them all. So it will be on the day the Son of Man is revealed. On that day, a person who is on the housetop and whose belongings are in the house must not go down to get them, and likewise a person in the field must not return to what was left behind. Remember the wife of Lot. Whoever seeks to preserve his life will lose it, but whoever loses it will save it. I tell you, on that night there will be two people in one bed; one will be taken, the other left. And there will be two women grinding meal together; one will be taken, the other left.” They said to him in reply, “Where, Lord?” He said to them, “Where the body is, there also the vultures will gather.”
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In Genesis, Noah is associated with the story of the Great Flood. When humanity becomes more and more corrupt, God decides to sweep the earth of its inhabitants (cf Gn 6:7). Among his ungodly contemporaries, Noah is distinguished as a good and blameless man who walks with God, as did his forefather Enoch (cf Gn 6:9; Gn 5:24). God decides to deliver Noah and his immediate family from the destruction of the flood. He instructs Noah to build an ark.
Noah, in a way, is a “type” of the saving mission of Jesus. He is rightly regarded as the connecting link between the old and the new worlds. He is the second great progenitor of the human family, the head of a new human family, the representative of the whole race (cf Gn 9:1-7). His name means “rest,” “repose,” “consolation.”
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SOURCE: “365 Days with the Lord,” ST PAULS, 7708 St. Paul Rd., SAV, Makati City (Phils.); Tel.: 895-9701; Fax 895-7328; E-mail: [email protected]; Website: http://www.stpauls.ph.