Also he sent forth a dove from him, to see if the waters were abated from off the face of the ground;
All Commentaries on Genesis 8:8 Go To Genesis 8
Bede
AD 735
After [the raven] he sent a dove, and it came to him in the evening, carrying in its mouth an olive branch with green leaves. You are paying attention, I believe, and with your intellect you anticipate me as I speak. The olive branch with green leaves is the grace of the Holy Spirit, rich in the words of life, the fullness of which rests upon Christ, [as] the psalm says, “God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness above your fellows.” Concerning this gift given to Christ’s fellows, John speaks: “You have the anointing from the holy one, and you know all things.” And by a most beautiful conjunction the figure is in agreement with the fulfillment—a corporeal dove brought the olive branch to the ark which was washed by the waters of the flood; the Holy Spirit descended in the form of a corporeal dove upon the Lord when he was baptized in the waters of the Jordan. Not only the human beings but also the living things which the ark contained, and also the very wood from which the ark was made, prefigure us members of Christ and of the church after our reception of the washing of the waters of regeneration. Through the anointing of the sacred chrism may we be signed with the grace of the Holy Spirit, and may he deign to keep it inviolate in us who himself gave it [to us], Jesus Christ our Lord who with the almighty Father in the unity of the same Holy Spirit lives and reigns for all ages. Amen.
