Stinking Salvation
Reflection by Father Kelly
To take part in the Eucharist is to learn of your own salvation by the forgiveness of your sins. When you join in the Mass, you should be able to hear the water roar to a halt at the Red Sea, to taste the sweet waters at Mirabah, to feel the ground solid beneath your feet as the Jordan parts to allow you enter the Holy Land. When we stand around the water fountain later, or we gather at Starbuck’s we tell the mighty deeds of God in the past and we express our confidence that He is doing the same for us now. To pray the Eucharistic prayer is to smell the Ark of Noah.
Once, when I was living in Rome, I showed a family around the holy places. There were three generations of the family in the group, and one of the sons, John, was obviously the black sheep, with controversial history of bad decisions. I was showing them the mosaics of the baptistery of St John in the Lateran. There on the wall, one can see Noah’s Ark, packed tight with all the people and the animals. I was explaining that the Ark is often used as a type of the Church, a place where people can take shelter from harm and where we are safe.
Later on, as we sat in a restaurant, John asked me to tell him again about the Ark as a type for the Church. He laughed as he speculated on how bad the smell must have been in that Ark. “The Ark is a bit like our family, it has lots of stinky people in there. My brothers think I’m the one that stinks up the family. They think I disgrace the family name. But I am not the only stinky one in my family, if the truth be told.” We all laughed nervously.
But he had hit on a truth that makes some people uncomfortable – that the Church stinks just like the Ark. It stinks because it is doing its job, drawing sinful people out of the great flood and packing them safely into the Ark and bringing them safely to dry land. He remarked that the brother probably thinks that the Church has to be kept clean of all dirty people like himself.
John reminded me that, of the eight people who God saved in the Ark, one, Noah, was an alcoholic; two of the girls raped their father, one of the sons “laughed” at his naked father. That’s four pretty dysfunctional people out of eight. That’s 50% of the Church who smell just as badly as the animals.
I look at John and all the other Johns and I know it is my duty to help them return to that Church. The Church needs its Johns as it enters into the cloud of the saving God. The Church needs sinners of all scents. If nobody smells, then the Ark will not be the Ark. Without Noah the Lush, the Ark might never have made it through the Deluge. Without his lusty daughters, the human race would not have survived. The Church is indeed a hostel for sinners just as the Ark was refuge for smelly animals and smelly characters.
All God’s creatures have a place in the choir. Worshipping people, - people being saved- they smell while they are being saved. It cannot have been fun for Noah to step in dung for forty days. But while you are feeling sorry for Noah, remember that it wasn’t much fun either for the cows - being milked by a drunken sailor!
“All God’s creatures have a place in the Choir
Some sing low and some sing higher.
Some sing out loud on the telephone wire.
And some just clap their hands.”