Opening Prayer 7:05-7:10
Lord, you promised that when two or three of us are gathered in your name, you are there,
Well, we are here – multiples of 2 or 3, asking your blessings to be poured out
upon those for whom we have asked for your help tonight...
SPECIAL PRAYERS FOR …
Lord, please send your love, healing, guidance, and protection upon those intentions we have just put before You.
(moment of silence)
We pray for the health and safety of all those experiencing danger or suffering in the world, whether
by natural causes or human causes.
We pray for all those who were hurt by the Covid virus; and those who died from it.
Please help to put this disease behind us and help us rebuild a better world than we had before.
Lord, you know our greatest needs so we also ask you to send your wise blessings to each one of us here tonight.
Help us to learn to walk with you every minute of our day
for we know such a partnership with you will carry us through all small or large difficulties, and deliver us to Heaven.
Lord, You have asked us to study your Word diligently, so we have come here tonight to do just that.
Help us understand the lessons you wish us for each of us to know.
And, as we plead at the start of every Mass, we pray out loud and together:
The Confiteor I confess to almighty God
and to you, my brothers and sisters,
that I have greatly sinned
in my thoughts and in my words,
in what I have done, and in what I have failed to do –
through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault.
Therefore I ask blessed Mary ever-Virgin, all the Angels and Saints,
and you, my brothers and sisters,
to pray for me to the Lord our God.
Tonight
10 Min Journeys through the Mass
Noah conclusion, The Tower of Babel
House notes/rules…
1. The notes/recaps from our meetings are posted on our Catholic Catacombs Light website https://catholiccatacombs.wixsite.com/website/blog, usually within a day. Taylor will demonstrate.
2. See The Chosen. Knowing Jesus Christ means being able to better relate to God. Check it out: The Chosen at https://thechosen.link/1Y1R7.
3. Member relations. Protestants are our friends and brothers in Christ. I owe a part of my return to the faith to them. We have Protestants and former Protestants in our group and so let’s be loving and courteous when we are discussing doctrinal differences.
4. No politics. It would be easy to self-destruct; however, that’s not our goal. Our goal is to learn the Bible, explain the Catholic faith particularly as it comes from the Bible, and bring people into a closer relationship with Jesus Christ in their daily lives.
5. Questions encouraged. If you have questions about anything, you can email the group via Meetup, or me directly at ron@hallagan.net.
Bible Study Format
Week 1: Oct 5 – Gospel Readings: Jesus and Herod
Week 2: Oct 12 – Bible Narrative Exegesis from Genesis to Revelations: Finish Noah & the Ark, Tower of Babel (Chs.9, 11)
Week 3: Oct 19 – Topic of Choice – Jesus’ Great Parables: The Parable of the Talents (Matt 25:14-30)
Week 4: Oct 26 – Open Mic – What are your faith obstacles, either in your personal or work life? Send other questions to Ron.
Bible Topics Survey Results 1. Jesus’ Greatest Parables 2. Hell, Purgatory, Heaven 3. Christian Comparisons 4. Great Women in the Bible 5. Why is there suffering in the world 6. Compare World Religions 7. Revelations
The Jewish faith was the faith of Jesus and so Jewish history is our history. It is useful to see the religious holidays religious Jews celebrate.
Nov 28-Dec 6: Hanukah (from the book of Maccabees)
10 Minute Journey through the Mass, “The Source and Summit of Christian Life” – CCC #1324-27 9:10-9:20
1) The Sign of the Cross – we invite the Holy Trinity into ourselves and into our gathered community.
2) The Lord Be With You, And With Your Spirit – Jesus and the Holy Spirit are invited into, and interacting with us in the Mass.
3) Confiteor – in our preparation for our encounter with God, we confess our sins to Him and to each other.
The Confiteor (continued) – and the Allegory of the Chariot
Last week we talked about “in my thoughts” which is where the other three – in our words, what we did, what we failed to do – originate; and that managing our thoughts is the both the greatest power humans have, and the most underutilized. This calls to mind Plato’s Allegory of the Chariot, revised by Augustine and Thomas Aquinas: the chariot, charioteer, and horses symbolize the whole man (his soul).
Q: Allegory of the Chariot:
Q: What is important about Desire/Emotions?
Desire and Emotions are intertwined. Our desires lead to emotional experiences – both good passions (happiness, courage, love, kindness, patience) and bad passions (guilt, embarrassment, jealousy, anger, hate).
Q: What is important about the Will?
Our will controls our desires, which controls our emotions. If we don’t control our desires (food, alcohol, sex, money), what happens? What happens to a child who is given everything (silver spoon…)? No control over desires. Spoiled? Who’s fault?
Q: What is important about Reason/Intellect?
Our intellect (our ability to reason) is what informs our will whether or not it is good (or not good) to proceed, do more, do less, or stop.
Q: Where would you say humans need the most training?
Very possibly it is different for different people; and even different at different times of our lives. Usually, though, it is the will.
Allegory of the Chariot
If desire isn’t controlled by reason and the will, the emotions that can result can be out of control. The horses will take off and it’s often not a good ending.
Plato (300 BC) taught that if reason, the will, and desire/emotions are kept in proper balance, then one can become “eudaimon” (the Greek word for “compassionate genius,” or “good angel”).
Q: How did Jewish philosophy tie in with the Allegory of the Chariot? Hint: Think of what was lost in the Fall of Man. By following the serpent’s advice and choosing the apple (to be like God but without God), humans lost “Grace” – Sanctifying Grace, specifically. Q: What does Sanctifying Grace strengthen? It strengthens the link between Reason, the Will, and Desire. Q: What do we gain back in Baptism? Sanctifying Grace. We gain it through our relationship with God (specifically the Holy Spirit) which had been lost in the Fall. Q: What did Augustine and Aquinas add to the Allegory post-Christ? An internal partnership with God. The Holy Spirit in the Sacraments. Jesus said, “My yoke is light/gentle/kind, pleasant.” - Mt 11:30
NOAH Context for today… In the first part of Noah (Chps 6-8), we saw the world after Cain had deteriorated significantly (violence and greed everywhere). God found one good man, Noah, and warned him to get ready for a flood that would wipe out all the bad guys. He tells him to build an boat (ark) that is 450 feet long, 75 feet wide, and 45 feet high (which, btw, is marine stable), and to gather the animals in pairs onto the ark. Near the end of Chapter 7, it says that the Lord then shut him in the ark and the rains began and continued for 40 days and 40 nights. Q: Where else have you heard “40” used before and what is its biblical
Moses on Mt. Sinai getting the Ten Commandments
Israelites in the desert (Exodus) Jesus in the desert being tempted by Satan
Jesus teaches his disciples between his Resurrection and Ascension
The meaning of 40 is testing, trials, and new beginnings
Noah and the Ark, continued
And when the waters had swelled on the earth for 150 days, the fountains of the abyss and the floodgates of the sky were closed, and the downpour from the sky was held back. Gradually the waters receded from the earth. In the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat.
Noah opened the hatch of the ark that he had made, and he released a raven. It flew back and forth until the waters dried off from the earth. Then he released a dove, to see if the waters had lessened on the earth. But the dove could find no place to perch, and it returned to him in the ark, for there was water over all the earth. Putting out his hand, he caught the dove and drew it back t
o him inside the ark. He waited yet seven days more and again released the dove from the ark. In the evening the dove came back to him, and there in its bill was a plucked-off olive leaf! So Noah knew that the waters had diminished on the earth. He waited yet another seven days and then released the dove; but this time it did not come back.
Q: Meaning of dove? (Also symbolizes the HS…)
Life. Gen 1:2 Creation story.
Then God said to Noah: Go out of the ark, together with your wife and your sons and your sons’ wives. Bring out with you every living thing that is with you—all creatures, be they birds or animals or crawling things that crawl on the earth—and let them abound on the earth, and be fertile and multiply on it. So Noah came out, together with his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives; and all the animals, all the birds, and all the crawling creatures that crawl on the earth went out of the ark by families.
Then Noah built an altar to the LORD, and choosing from every clean animal and every clean bird, he offered burnt offerings on the altar. God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them: Be fertile and multiply and fill the earth.
Any living creature that moves about shall be yours to eat; I give them all to you as I did the green plants. Only meat with its lifeblood still in it you shall not eat.
Indeed for your own lifeblood I will demand an accounting: from every animal I will demand it, and from a human being, each one for the blood of another, I will demand an accounting for human life.
Anyone who sheds the blood of a human being, by a human being shall that one’s blood be shed. For in the image of God have human beings been made.
God said to Noah and to his sons with him:
I will establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all creatures be destroyed by the waters of a flood; there shall not be another flood to devastate the earth.
God said: This is the sign of the covenant that I am making between me and you and every living creature with you for all ages to come: I set my bow in the clouds to serve as a sign of the covenant between me and the earth.
Q: How many colors in a rainbow?
Seven!... red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet
Gen 9
Noah, a man of the soil, was the first to plant a vineyard. He drank some of the wine, became drunk, and lay naked inside his tent.
Ham, the father of Canaan, saw his father’s nakedness, and he told his two brethren outside.
Shem and Japheth, however, took a robe, and holding it on their shoulders, they walked backward and covered their father’s nakedness; since their faces were turned the other way, they did not see their father’s nakedness.
When Noah woke up from his wine and learned what his youngest son had done to him, he said:
“Cursed be Canaan [the line of Ham], the lowest of slaves shall he be to his brothers.”
He also said: “Blessed be the LORD, the God of Shem! Let Canaan be his slave.
May God expand Japheth, and may he dwell among the tents of Shem; and let Canaan be his slave.”
Noah lived three hundred fifty years after the flood. The whole lifetime of Noah was nine hundred and fifty years; then he died.
Q: What about the critics who say Noah’s story copies other flood stories from those ancient times?
Good point. Let’s dig into this. Interestingly, there are some 300 flood legends around the world.
In the area of Mesopotamia, there are at least three major flood stories (“myths”) found on ancient Sumerian and Babylonian tablets (with Noah’s story, that makes four): the Sumerian creation myth, the Atra-Hasis, and the Epic of Gilgamesh, all with uncanny similarities to Noah’s story – for example: a flood is sent by the gods to destroy humanity, a man told to build a boat to escape the flood, a sacrifice is made by the man to the gods afterwards, and they all occur in roughly the same prehistoric era and region. Just as when we compared Yahweh-God with the surrounding pagan religions, the stories differ in the same way as the pagan gods use humans as pawns where Yahweh tries to build a relationship with the people and teach them love, service, and forgiveness.
I found the Epic of Gilgamesh an interesting example to share. In that story, a council of gods floods the earth and selects one man, Utnapishtim, to gather animals aboard a cube-shaped boat. After the flood, Utnapishtim releases a bird to find land and then offers a sacrifice to the gods, just the way Noah did.
If anything, the other stories could just as easily have evolved from Noah’s, which is easy to believe when you just consider Jesus Christ’s teachings in the first 200 years. There was almost a heresy a year. Why? A heresy was/is simply someone who takes the best of Christ’s teachings (what they like the most about it) and combine it with their best of their own beliefs (usually the local popular or pagan beliefs) and bam! – a much more acceptable (by human standards) and enjoyable story. Who wants to follow a religion that teaches about the self-sacrifice that goes with love, compassion, and helping others/strangers? How much easier is it to just kill them and get on with our child and sex sacrifices to the goddesses of love and wine (which was pretty close to what Moses found in the Promised Land/Israel).
So, how easy would it be for these flood stores to have evolved in each surrounding culture after Noah’s flood?
And, if Noah’s story was written by divine inspiration, it wouldn’t matter which one was written down first, because in the end God’s version would be the correct one. Noah’s story also highlights why Yahweh is so different, so inconceivably opposite the other gods, in that he goes to incredible measures to raise man up – not to be what man wants to be, but what goodness calls him to be.
Q: Is the story of Noah’s Ark an example of science contradicting religion?
In one sense, all the accounts of a massive flood in ancient Mesopotamian region should serve to corroborate the Genesis account, not contradict it. Moreover, since the time these stories were dismissed as myths, geologists discovered that melting glaciers near the Black Sea could have caused the collapse of giant ice dams about 7,000 years ago (3000 BC – about the time of Noah). Such an event would have triggered sudden, massive flooding across a wide area, which would have served as the basis for all the flood accounts in the region.
The incoming water breaking through Bosporus eventually dug a channel more than 300 feet deep as it poured into the Black Sea basin, changing it from a freshwater lake to a saltwater ocean. In this scenario, the mud beneath the shell hash represents sediments from the rivers that fed the freshwater lake, the shell hash the remains of the animals that lived in that lake, and the layers above it the result of the saltwater incursion.
It was this event that some geologists believe could be the flood recorded in the Book of Genesis. The salt water poured through the deepening channel, creating a waterfall 200 times the volume of Niagara Falls (anyone who has ever traveled to the base of the N. Falls on the Maid of the Mist will have a sense of the power involved). In a single day enough water came through the channel to cover Manhattan to a depth at least two times the height of the World Trade Center, and the roar of the cascading water would have been heard 100 miles away. Anyone living in the fertile farmlands on the northern rim of the sea would have had the harrowing experience of seeing the boundary of the ocean move inland at the rate of a mile a day.
Q: What does the Church teach about the historicity of Noah and the Ark?
The Catholic Church does not prohibit interpretations of Genesis 6-8 that include a worldwide flood – indeed, it could have happened and if it did, it happened by the hand of God. And God has done miracles throughout history, so that’s not an obstacle, is it?
That said, neither does the Church require there to be a worldwide flood for one to interpret these passages. As we have discussed several times, Catholic theologians have long recognized that the first eleven chapters of Genesis are not written to be a modern day science or history book, but a book of faith, which runs much deeper and contains “simple and metaphorical language adapted to the mentality of a prehistoric people, yet states both principal truths which are fundamental for our salvation, and gives a popular description of the origin of the human race and the chosen people.” - Humani Generis, 38
Even if readers wish to interpret passages in Genesis that describe water covering the earth as meaning that the whole earth was inundated, keep in mind that a resident of ancient Mesopotamia likely understood the “the earth” to mean all the lands that he knew. This is understandable when you consider that even 3000+ years later (the Middle Ages) before Europeans “discovered” America, they thought the entire earth extended from their shores to the shores of India and Asia, which is why Columbus though he had landed in India, not America. If that was their “known earth” in 1400 AD, what was the “known earth” to primitive Mesopotamians in Noah’s day 3000 years before that?
Q: How did the Apostle James define Noah's kind of faith? (James 2:14-26)
James expressed this kind of faith as a living, active faith that brings salvation. It is by faith and action that someone is justified.
Q: Where did the Ark come to rest?
Somewhere among the mountains of a region known as Mt. Ararat (present day Armenia, map above).
Q: What was Noah's first act upon disembarking the Ark?
He built an altar to Yahweh and offered sacrifices which were entirely consumed (whole burnt offerings – for man’s sin) on God's altar. In response, God entered into a new covenant with Noah.
Q: What does the symbol of a dove mean to the Church?
For the Fathers of the Church, the dove hovering above the flood waters of chaos, just as God's Spirit had hovered above the waters of chaos in the first Creation (Gen 1:2), coupled with the vision of the Spirit of God descending like a dove above Jesus' baptismal waters (Mt 3:16; Jn 1:32), established the dove as a symbol of the activity of God the Holy Spirit among humanity.
Q: What covenant vow or oath does God make to Noah, his sons, and all creation, and what is the sign of the covenant?
God vows to never again destroy the earth by water. The covenant sign is the "bow" - rainbow. When He sees His bow He will "zakar," remember His covenant with Noah and all creation.
Q: What became of those souls who perished in the Great Flood? Were they doomed for all eternity? See 1 Pt 3:18-22; 4:6; CCC 632-34
God did not then, nor does He now, condemn anyone who has not had the opportunity to hear the Gospel of salvation (CCC 847-48). Those who refused to believe Noah waited in Sheol (the abode of the dead/ Hades) for the coming of the Redeemer-Messiah. All those souls who perished before the Resurrection of the Messiah, including the Great Flood dead, had the opportunity to hear the Gospel of salvation from the very lips of Christ. Jesus led those who accepted God's gift of salvation out of Sheol and into the gates of heaven.
Biblical Numerology (the study of the meaning of numbers in the Bible)
Q: How many people were saved from the flood in the safety of the Ark?
Eight people. For the Hebrew people, the number 8 came to symbolize salvation, redemption, rebirth, regeneration.
Q: How many times is the word "covenant" (“berit”) used in the Hebrew text of the Flood narrative?
Genesis 6:18; 9:9, 11, 12, 13, 15, 16, 17 = eight times.
Q: How many times is the word "seven" repeated in the Flood narrative?
Genesis 7:2, 4, 10; 8:4, 10, 12, 14 = seven times.
Q: How many colors are there in a rainbow? How is this number connected to the first Creation event, to the Flood and the covenant formation with Noah and the renewed creation?
Seven (colors listed above). The rainbow in its 7 color display recalls the 7 days of the first creation and symbolizes perfection; 7 also represents the oath swearing needed for renewing a covenant (hence, the 7 colors in God’s covenant rainbow to Noah).
Bonus Q: What was Noah’s wife’s name?
Na’amah. Not in the Bible. It is listed in “Jewish midrash” (another name for commentary, or exegesis, by Hebrew scholars).
It is also interesting to read Islam’s view of Noah and the flood:
“Noah, also known as Nuh (Arabic: نُوْحٌ, romanized: Nūḥ), also known as Noah, is recognized in Islam as a prophet and messenger of God. He is one of the Ulu'l azm prophets. Noah's mission was to warn his people, who were plunged in depravity and sin. God charged Noah with the duty of preaching to his people, advising them to abandon idolatry and to worship only God and to live good and pure lives. Although he preached the Message of God with zeal, his people refused to mend their ways, leading to building the Ark and the Deluge, the Great Flood. Noah's mission had a double character: he had to warn his people, asking them to call for repentance and, at the same time, he had to preach about God's mercy and forgiveness, promising them the glad tidings God would provide if they led righteous lives.” In Islamic tradition, it is disputed whether the Great Flood was a global or a local one. Noah's preaching and prophet-hood spanned 950 years, according to the Quran. References to Noah are scattered throughout the Qur'an, and there is even an entire sura carrying his name, Nūḥ. - Noah in Islam, Islamic view of Noah (Nuh), Dec 2012
Q: Btw, who are “Ulu’l-azm Prophets”?
Meaning = strong-willed possessors of the truth.
It is understood that some prophets chosen among the messengers are called ulu’l-azm due to qualities different than the others. Although there are different views about the number and identity of these prophets, it is generally agreed that ulu’l-azm refers to the five greatest messengers, that is, Muhammad, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and Noah.
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Genesis 10 – we will not be reviewing. The entire chapter lists the decendents of Shem, Ham, and Japeth. It ends with verse 32:
“These are the clans of Noah’s sons, according to their origins and by their nations. From these the nations of the earth branched out after the flood.”
Genesis 11-12 – The Tower of Babel and Meeting Abraham (next 2nd Tues of the month)
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