Daily Bible Readings Tuesday June 30 2009 Thirteenth Week in Ordinary Time

June 30 2009 Tuesday 13th Week in Ordinary Time
Saint of the Day – First Martyrs of the Church of Rome

About the sources used. The readings on this site are not official for the Mass of Roman Rite of the Catholic Church in the USA, but are from sources free from copyright. They are here to present the comparable readings alongside traditional Catholic commentary as published in the Haydock Bible for your own personal study. Readings vary depending on your local calendar.

Official Readings of the Liturgy at – http://www.usccb.org/nab/readings/063009.shtml

Genesis 19:15-29
DR Challoner

And when it was morning, the angels pressed him, saying:

Arise, take thy wife, and the two daughters that thou hast: lest thou also perish in the wickedness of the city.

And as he lingered, they took his hand, and the hand of his wife, and of his two daughters, because the Lord spared him. And they brought him forth, and set him without the city: and there they spoke to him, saying:

Save thy life: look not back, neither stay thou in all the country about: but save thy self in the mountain, lest thou be also consumed.

And Lot said to them:

I beseech thee, my Lord, Because thy servant hath found grace before thee, and thou hast magnified thy mercy, which thou hast shewn to me, in saving my life, and I cannot escape to the mountain, lest some evil seize me, and I die. There is this city here at hand, to which I may flee, it is a little one, and I shall be saved in it: is it not a little one, and my soul shall live?

And he said to him:

Behold also in this, I have heard thy prayers, not to destroy the city for which thou hast spoken. Make haste, and be saved there: because I cannot do any thing till thou go in thither.

Therefore the name of that city was called Segor. The sun was risen upon the earth, and Lot entered into Segor. And the Lord rained upon Sodom and Gomorrha brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven. And he destroyed these cities, and all the country about, all the inhabitants of the cities, and all things that spring from the earth.

And his wife looking behind her, was turned into a statue of salt. And Abraham got up early in the morning, and in the place where he had stood before with the Lord: He looked towards Sodom and Gomorrha, and the whole land of that country: and he saw the ashes rise up from the earth as the smoke of a furnace. Now when God destroyed the cities of that country, remembering Abraham, he delivered Lot out of the destruction of the cities wherein he had dwelt.

Responsorial Psalm 25:2-3, 9-12 (Ps 26 NAB)
DR Challoner Text Only

Prove me, O Lord, and try me;
burn my reins and my heart.
For thy mercy is before my eyes;
and I am well pleased with thy truth.
Take not away my soul, O God, with the wicked:
nor my life with bloody men:
In whose hands are iniquities:
their right hand is filled with gifts.
But as for me, I have walked in my innocence:
redeem me, and have mercy on me.
My foot hath stood in the direct way:
in the churches I will bless thee, O Lord.

The Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ According to Saint Matthew 8:23-27
Haydock New Testament

And when he entered into the boat, his disciples followed him. And behold a great tempest arose in the sea, so that the boat was covered with waves, but he was asleep. And his disciples came to him, and awaked him, saying:

Lord, save us, we perish.

And Jesus saith to them:

Why are you fearful, O ye of little faith?

Then rising up, he commanded the winds, and the sea, and there came a great calm. But the men wondered, saying:

What manner of man is this, for the winds, and the sea obey him?

Haydock Commentary Genesis 19:15-29
Notes Copied From Haydock Commentary Site

• Ver. 16. He lingered, intreating the Lord to save the city; and loath, perhaps to lose all his property, for the sake of which he had chosen that abode. — Spared him, and his wife and two daughters, for his sake.  These four were all that were even tolerably just: for we find them all soon giving signs of their weakness, and of the danger to which even the best are exposed by evil communications.  H.
• Ver. 17. Look not back. Flee with all expedition; let no marks of pity for the wretched Sodomites, nor of sorrow for the lose of your property, be seen.
• Ver. 18. My lord, addressing himself to the angel, who led him and his wife.  M.
• Ver. 19. The mountain above Segor.  He is faint-hearted, and does not comply with readiness and exactitude; though, when he had obtained leave to remain in Segor, he still fears, and flees to the mountain, v. 30, (H.) on the south-east of the dead sea.  C.
• Ver. 22. Segor. That is, a little one. Ch. — In allusion to Lot’s words, v. 20.  As it was small, fewer sinners would of course be contained in it.  God had resolved to spare it, and therefore inspired Lot to pray for its preservation.  M. — Hence we may learn, how great a treasure and safeguard the just man is.  H.
• Ver. 23. Risen. It was morning when he left Sodom; (v. 15.) so this city must not have been very distant.  It was before called Bala, or swallowed up, and afterwards Salissa.  Theodoret supposes it was destroyed as soon as Lot had left it; and it seems Lot’s daughters thought so, since they concluded all men, except their father, had perished.
• Ver. 24. The Lord rained…from the Lord, in a miraculous manner.  Sodom and the other cities did not perish by earthquakes and other natural causes only, but by the divine wrath exerting itself in a visible manner.  Here is an insinuation of a plurality of persons in God, as the C. of Sirmich declares, c. 14. — And Gomorrha, and the other towns which were not so large, nor perhaps so infamous. — Brimstone and fire; to denote the bad odour and violence of their disorders.  M.
• Ver. 25. All the inhabitants, both the body and soul, (Jude v. 7.): even the infants would probably die in original sin, as their parents were unbelievers, and careless of applying the proper remedies.  H. — The women imitated the men in pride and dissolute morals, so that all deserved to perish.  M. — All things; so that even now the environs are barren, and the lake dark and smoking.  T.
• Ver. 26. And his wife. As a standing memorial to the servants of God to proceed in virtue, and not to look back to vice or its allurements.  Ch. — His, Lot’s wife. The two last verses might be within a parenthesis. — Remember Lot’s wife, our Saviour admonishes us.  Having begun a good work, let us not leave it imperfect, and lose our reward.  Lu. xvii. Mat. xxiv. — A statue of durable metallic salt, petrified as it were, to be an eternal monument of an incredulous soul. Wisd. x. 7.  Some say it still exists.  H. — God may have inflicted this temporal punishment on her, and saved her soul.  M. — She looked back, as if she distrusted the words of the angel; but her fault was venial.  T.
• Ver. 29. Lot. Even he owed his safety to the merits of Abraham.

Haydock Commentary Matthew 8:23-27

• Ver. 23. This bark is the Catholic Church.  The sea denotes the world, the winds and tempests shew the attempts of the wicked spirits to overturn the Church.  The Lord seems to sleep, when he permits his Church to suffer persecution and other trials, which he permits, that he may prove her faith, and reward her virtue and merits.  Chry. hom. xxiii. in Mat. viii.  The apostles had followed their divine Master.  They were with him, and executing his orders, and it is under these circumstances they are overtaken with a storm.  If their obedience to Jesus Christ, if his presence did not free them from danger, to what frightful storms do those persons expose themselves, who undertake the voyage of the present life without him?  What can they expect but to be tossed to and fro for a time, and at last miserably to founder?  Faithful souls ought, from the example here offered them, to rise superior to every storm and tempest, by invoking the all-powerful and ever ready assistance of heaven, and by always calling in God to their help before they undertake any thing of moment.  A.
• Ver. 25. Should God appear to sleep, with the apostles, we should approach nearer to him, and awaken  him with our repeated prayers, saying: “Lord, save us, or we perish.”  A. — Had our Saviour been awake, the disciples would have been less afraid, or less sensible of the want of his assistance: he therefore slept, that they might be better prepared for the miracle he was about to work.  Chry. hom. xxviii.
• Ver. 26. Why are you fearful, having me with you?  Do you suppose that sleep can take from me the knowledge of your danger, or the power of relieving you?  A. — He commanded the winds. Christ shewed himself Lord and Master of the sea and winds.  His words in S. Mark (iv. 39,) demonstrate his authority: Rising up he rebuked the wind, and said to the sea: Peace, be still. Wi. — As before our Lord restored Peter’s mother-in-law on the spot, not only to health, but to her former strength; so here he shews himself supreme Lord of all things, not only by commanding the winds to cease, but, moreover, by commanding a perfect calm to succeed.  Chry. hom. xxiv.  How many times has he preserved his Catholic Church, when (to all human appearance, and abstracting from his infallible promises) she has been in the most imminent danger of perishing?  How many times by a miracle, or interposition of his omnipotence, less sensible indeed, but not less real, has he rescued our souls, on the point of being swallowed up in the infernal abyss?  A. — He commands the mute elements to be subservient to his wish.  He commands the sea, and it obeys him; he speaks to the winds and tempests, and they are hushed; he commands every creature, and they obey.  Man, and man only, man honoured in a special manner by being made after the image and likeness of his Creator, to whom speech and reason are given, dares to disobey and despise his Creator.  S. Aug. hom. in Mat.
• From this allegory of the ship and the storm, we may take occasion to speak of the various senses in which the words of Scripture may be occasionally taken. . . . The sense of Scripture is twofold, literal and spiritual. The literal is that which the words immediately signify.  The spiritual or mystic sense is that which things expressed by words mean, as in Genesis xxii, what is literally said of the immolation of Isaac, is spiritually understood of Christ; and in Coloss. ii. 12, by the baptism of Christ, S. Paul means his burial.  The spiritual sense in its various acceptations, is briefly and accurately given in the following distich:
• Littera gesta docet, quid credas allegoria,
• Moralis quid agas, quo tendas anagogia.