Lessons 4-6 from the Divine Office of Sexagesima Sunday: Chapter 4 from the book concerning Noah and the Ark by St. Ambrose the Bishop.
Lessons 4-6 from the Divine Office of Sexagesima Sunday: Chapter 4 from the book concerning Noah and the Ark by St. Ambrose the Bishop.
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We read that the Lord was angry. However, God did bear in mind (that is, he knew) that man was hard put to remain sinless, placed, as he was, in flesh on earth; for earth is the home of temptations, and the flesh is the enticement of corruption. Yet man had a reasonable soul, and his soul had power to control his body; and, being so made, he nevertheless struggled but little to keep himself from falling into that from whence he would not desire to return. God's thoughts are not as man's thoughts; in him there is no such thing as change of mind, no such thing as to be angry and then cool down again. Therefore, anything said concerning God's anger is to be understood as setting forth the grievous nature of our sins, whereby we have (so to speak) merited the divine wrath. For iniquity had grown to such a degree that God, who by his nature cannot be moved by anger, or hatred, or any passion whatsoever, is represented as provoked to anger.
And God threatened that he would destroy man. He said: I will destroy man, whom I have created, from the face of the earth; both man and beast, and the creeping things, and the fowls of the air. Wherein had the brute beasts offended? They had been created for man's use; and, when man was destroyed it followed that they must share the same fate because they were no longer of any use. And there is a higher reason: Man is a living soul, capable of reason. For man may be described as an animal, alive whilst subject to death, and endowed with reason. When therefore the highest is gone, why should the lower branches remain? How can the worth of any creature remain if virtue itself (the basis of well-being) be lost?
But in condemnation of the rest of men, and to manifest the goodness of God, it is written that Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. From these words we learn that the sin of others doth not cast its shadow on the righteous man, since Noah himself is preserved, to be the ancestor of the whole human race. He is praised, not because he was of a noble race, but because he was a just man and perfect. For the lineage of the upright man is to be traced in the pedigree of virtue which doth come forth from him. Even as blood maketh the lineage of man, so doth virtue form the lineage of souls. As the kindreds of men are made great by the grandeur of their lineage, so is the honour of souls made manifest by the grandeur of their virtues.