“Make thee an ark of timber planks: thou shalt make little rooms in the ark, and thou shalt pitch it within and without. And thus shalt thou make it: The length of the ark shall be three hundred cubits: the breadth of it fifty cubits, and the height of it thirty cubits. Thou shalt make a window in the ark, and in a cubit shalt thou finish the top of it: and the door of the ark thou shalt set in the side: with lower, middle chambers, and third stories shalt thou make it.”
The ark is a representation of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. He hides you in His Heart through the rains and waters of this life, “Deep calleth on deep, at the noise of thy flood-gates. All thy heights and thy billows have passed over me” (Psalm 41:8). It is His love that will carry you to the other side of the flood safely, and the more you draw yourself into His loving Heart, the more secure you will be: “Abide in my love” (John 15:9). The ark is made of wood, for His Heart was most plainly revealed upon the cross, which shows that He would endure anything for the sake of winning your own heart. It contains many little rooms within, for though God loves you as if you were the only person in the world, “One is my dove, my perfect one is but one” (Song 6:8), in His magnificence He can extend this same love to all, loving each person perfectly and hiding all His faithful in the confines of His Most Sacred Heart, that they may be immersed together in His love. In this the ark is also representative of the Church, which harbors all those who breast the waves of life with love and rise above the storms of death into eternal life, and do it together, united in love: “For as in one body we have many members, but all the members have not the same office: so we being many, are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another” (Romans 12:4-5). The pitch, which one translation calls bitumen, is laid within and without, and in addition to holding the ark together, would have overpowered the smell of animal waste with its own strong fragrance. So too does the Sacred Heart, within and without covered in love, overwhelm that which is imperfect, broken, and weak in you with love: “I am black but beautiful, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, as the tents of Cedar, as the curtains of Solomon” (Song 1:4); for though you are black and barbaric as the tribes of Cedar in your fallen humanity, you are beautiful in love and in the ways you express love that God has given you. Now, though a literal heart is longer than it is wide, and wider than it is thick, just as the ark, the numbers have a particular significance. It is three hundred cubits long, which St. Jerome indicates is the number symbolizing the letter Hebrew letter Thau, which was in the form of a cross: “And the Lord said to him: Go through the midst of the city, through the midst of Jerusalem: and mark Thau upon the foreheads of the men that sigh, and mourn for all the abominations that are committed in the midst thereof” (Ezechiel 9:4). In this, when you look at Jesus hanging on the cross, He calls you to realize that He did that for you, for love of you, that He may be yours and you be His, and He would do anything for love of you. This in turn leads to repentance for anything that is contrary to His love, thus the fifty cubits, which is the number of David’s Psalm of penance: “Have mercy on me, O God, according to thy great mercy. And according to the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my iniquity” (Psalm 50:3). Thus, in seeing the love of Jesus for you and leaving behind what is contrary to love of Him, you immerse yourself in the life of the Trinity by following His way of loving, which is obedience to the commandments of God; thus the thirty cubits, which is three, representing the Trinity, multiplied by ten for the Ten Commandments. Thus you live the life of love and are carried with tenderness to the mountain of God, which is a figure both of heavenly contemplation and heaven itself: “And the ark rested in the seventh month, the seven and twentieth day of the month, upon the mountains of Armenia” (Genesis 8:4). The window in the ark represents the lance’s piercing wound in the Heart of Christ: “One of the soldiers with a spear opened his side, and immediately there came out blood and water” (John 19:34), for it is the opening through which you enter mystically into Jesus. From His Heart came the sacraments, and in your life at this moment are particularly representative of the blood of the Eucharist and the water of confession. Ah, Theophila, you need not high contemplation, ecstasy, or mystical experience to drink love from the Heart of your Savior, you need only faith in the magnificent love poured out upon you in receiving Holy Communion, for in this Jesus gives Himself entirely to you in love. All of creation is wrapped in this loving Heart, for He holds all things as precious and beautiful, and thus the door of His Heart is open to all: “Go ye into the whole world, and preach the gospel to every creature” (Mark 16:15). Finally, the three stories are like unto the three stories of the temple built by Solomon, the place of worship for Israel-Judah: “The floor that was underneath, was five cubits in breadth, and the middle floor was six cubits in breadth, and the third floor was seven cubits in breadth” (3 Kings 6:6), whereas God’s dwelling place in the New Covenant is in the hearts of His faithful, united to His own Heart: “But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true adorers shall adore the Father in spirit and in truth. For the Father also seeketh such to adore him. God is a spirit; and they that adore him, must adore him in spirit and in truth” (John 4:23-24).