The beauty of the fall colors we have witnessed over the last few weeks is just one instance of what the Book of Wisdom describes as expressions of the beauty of the Creator. As Christians the world of nature is—as Saint Bernard observed—the book in which we can read of God and gain some insight into his beauty, power, and magnificence. However, today’s gospel warns us that the beauty and goodness of the world around us can also distract us from a living awareness of God. This occurs when creation is used selfishly in satisfying our wants and our undisciplined desires. And so, Jesus reminds us that in the days of Noah, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage up to the day that Noah entered the ark. In this, those engrossed in this passing world and its pleasures, are worse than those who worshiped the luminaries of heaven or the circuit of the stars. The latter were at least open to the transcendent and not totally self-absorbed and fundamentally closed to both God, neighbor, and even creation. Monastic ongoing conversion is aimed at increasingly freeing us from such self-absorption and the tyranny of self-will and self-centeredness. Let us, therefore, be on guard against forgetting the somber lessons of the great flood and the destruction of Sodom.