Daily Reading for Tuesday, July 1st, 2025

Reading 1, Genesis 19:15-29

¹⁵ When dawn broke the angels urged Lot on, 'To your feet! Take your wife and your two daughters who are here, or you will be swept away in the punishment of the city.'

¹⁶ And as he hesitated, the men seized his hand and the hands of his wife and his two daughters -- Yahweh being merciful to him -- and led him out and left him outside the city.

¹⁷ When they had brought him outside, he was told, 'Flee for your life. Do not look behind you or stop anywhere on the plain. Flee to the hills or you will be swept away.'

¹⁸ 'Oh no, my lord!' Lot said to them,

¹⁹ 'You have already been very good to your servant and shown me even greater love by saving my life, but I cannot flee to the hills, or disaster will overtake me and I shall die.

²⁰ That town over there is near enough to flee to, and is small. Let me flee there-after all it is only a small place -- and so survive.'

²¹ He replied, 'I grant you this favour too, and will not overthrow the town you speak of.

²² Hurry, flee to that one, for I cannot do anything until you reach it.' That is why the town is named Zoar.

²³ The sun rose over the horizon just as Lot was entering Zoar.

²⁴ Then Yahweh rained down on Sodom and Gomorrah brimstone and fire of his own sending.

²⁵ He overthrew those cities and the whole plain, with all the people living in the cities and everything that grew there.

²⁶ But Lot's wife looked back, and was turned into a pillar of salt.

²⁷ Next morning, Abraham hurried to the place where he had stood before Yahweh,

²⁸ and looking towards Sodom and Gomorrah and the whole area of the plain, he saw the smoke rising from the ground like smoke from a furnace.

²⁹ Thus it was that, when God destroyed the cities of the plain, he did not forget Abraham and he rescued Lot from the midst of the overthrow, when he overthrew the cities where Lot was living.

Responsorial Psalm, Psalms 26:2-3, 9-10, 11-12

² Probe me, Yahweh, examine me, Test my heart and my mind in the fire.

³ For your faithful love is before my eyes, and I live my life by your truth.

⁹ Do not couple me with sinners, nor my life with men of violence,

¹⁰ whose hands are stained with guilt, their right hands heavy with bribes.

¹¹ In innocence I will go on my way; ransom me, take pity on me.

¹² I take my stand on the right path; I will bless you, Yahweh, in the assemblies.