The Ark
Noah's ark, which carried a few people safely through the flood, is a figure of Baptism and of the Church.
What the Ark means
The ark recalls Noah, whom God told to build a vessel to save his family and the animals from the flood (Genesis 6 to 9). The First Letter of Peter sees a pattern in it: a few people, eight in all, were saved through water (1 Peter 3:20). The Church reads the flood and the ark as prefiguring salvation by Baptism (CCC 1094, 1219), and the blessing of baptismal water calls the waters of the flood a sign of the waters of Baptism.
The ark is also an image of the Church. In an image dear to the Church Fathers, the Church is prefigured by Noah's ark, "which alone saves from the flood" (CCC 845). The Catholic Encyclopedia notes that the ship was an early emblem of the Church, an idea as old as Tertullian, and that writers also compared the Church to Noah's ark.
In church art the ark appears in stained glass and Bible scenes, sometimes with the dove returning with an olive branch. It should not be confused with the Ark of the Covenant, the chest that held the tablets of the Law, which is a different symbol.
