Prior Noah

A steady companion to Prior Michael Brunner since his arrival to become the community’s superior has been his family of birds. The School recently featured them in an article: Hassan, Buddy, Sallahuddin, Susila, Nur, Loki, and Harley. The crew makes its presence known as one passes the RLH Building (the former science building), adding much sound and color to the campus. The birds have captivated the imaginations of student and faculty alike, including one student who himself raises homing pigeons. 

This avian menagerie may lead one to think of Noah. This is appropriate to our current liturgical season, as the Noahic presence in Lent is as inescapable as the flood. We have the forty days, the cleansing of human wickedness, the need for salvation. And there is the ark – which one should realize was more of a box than a ship, a kind of barge steered only by the tugboat of God’s mercy. Into that triple-decker box, rather large, perhaps the forerunner of the Amazon Warehouse, Noah is commanded to collect the living things of the earth and sky, two by two, walking and winged. We should consider that this task requires great attentiveness to nature as a prerequisite, some knowledge of zoology, to take careful inventory of these passengers. A lot was at stake, after all.  

This human proximity to the world of nature is echoed often by Pope Francis, who speaks of “a conviction which we today share, that everything is interconnected, and that genuine care for our own lives and our relationships with nature is inseparable from fraternity, justice and faithfulness to others.” (LS 70) The figure of Noah connects us to nature, making him a very contemporary figure: a man living out a commandment to preserve what of natural life can be preserved. Noah thus becomes both a penitential figure, and an ecological one. He enters history at one of its most somber moments, with God aggrieved that he ever even made us. But to ensure that what is salvageable is preserved, God calls upon Noah, and Noah carries all the breath of life with him: “through Noah, who remained innocent and just, God decided to open a path of salvation. In this way he gave humanity the chance of a new beginning. All it takes is one good person to restore hope!” (Laudato Si’ 71)  

The Catechism of the Catholic Church proposes this teaching: “Each creature possesses its own particular goodness and perfection… Each of the various creatures, willed in its own being, reflects in its own way a ray of God’s infinite wisdom and goodness. Man must therefore respect the particular goodness of every creature, to avoid any disordered use of things” (339). So perhaps Prior Michael’s menagerie, like Noah’s, offers a very current theological lesson, for our modern day and for our Lenten journey. 

If you missed the School’s article, you can find it here.