First Reading: Genesis 9:1-13

¹ And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth.
² The fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth, and upon every bird of the air, upon everything that creeps on the ground and all the fish of the sea; into your hand they are delivered.
³ Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you; and as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything.
⁴ Only you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood.
⁵ For your lifeblood I will surely require a reckoning; of every beast I will require it and of man; of every man’s brother I will require the life of man.
⁶ Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for God made man in his own image.
⁷ And you, be fruitful and multiply, bring forth abundantly on the earth and multiply in it.”
⁸ Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him,
⁹ ”Behold, I establish my covenant with you and your descendants after you,
¹⁰ and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the cattle, and every beast of the earth with you, as many as came out of the ark.
¹¹ I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.”
¹² And God said, “This is the sign of the covenant which I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations:
¹³ I set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth.