First Reading: Genesis 8:6-13, 20-22

⁶ At the end of forty days Noah opened the window of the ark which he had made,
⁷ and sent forth a raven; and it went to and fro until the waters were dried up from the earth.
⁸ Then he sent forth a dove from him, to see if the waters had subsided from the face of the ground;
⁹ but the dove found no place to set her foot, and she returned to him to the ark, for the waters were still on the face of the whole earth. So he put forth his hand and took her and brought her into the ark with him.
¹⁰ He waited another seven days, and again he sent forth the dove out of the ark;
¹¹ and the dove came back to him in the evening, and lo, in her mouth a freshly plucked olive leaf; so Noah knew that the waters had subsided from the earth.
¹² Then he waited another seven days, and sent forth the dove; and she did not return to him any more.
¹³ In the six hundred and first year, in the first month, the first day of the month, the waters were dried from off the earth; and Noah removed the covering of the ark, and looked, and behold, the face of the ground was dry.
²⁰ Then Noah built an altar to the LORD, and took of every clean animal and of every clean bird, and offered burnt offerings on the altar.
²¹ And when the LORD smelled the pleasing odor, the LORD said in his heart, “I will never again curse the ground because of man, for the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth; neither will I ever again destroy every living creature as I have done.
²² While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.”