The Holy Venerable-Martyr Nikon and His Disciples, Martyred with Him (270-75).
Great Fast Day 32. According to liturgical prescriptions, the Divine Liturgy is not celebrated today.
Sixth Hour – Isaiah 42:5-16; Vespers – Genesis 18:20-33; Proverbs 16:17-17:17.
Read Genesis 18:20-33
Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!
How did Abraham know he could so forthrightly approach God as he does in today’s reading?
God didn’t even say that He was going to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, He only said He would “go down to see whether they have done altogether according to the outcry which has come to me.” But Abraham knew two things: God is “the Judge of all the earth” and Sodom’s and Gomorrah’s “sin is very grave.” He could put two and two together.
Abraham’s remarkable boldness is informed by knowledge of God. He is zealous in defence of God’s good name. He precedes his requests for ever lower numbers with appropriate self-abasement.
Our greatest insight into what Abraham knows about God comes in the three verses preceding our reading. God says to Himself that He confides in Abraham so that he may respond in such a way that he and his descendants keep the covenant with God “so that the Lord may bring to Abraham what he has promised him.” Abraham picks up on God’s heart of compassion for humanity in what God discloses to him and imitates God in his intercession for them – “Abraham drew near.”
1 John 4:19-21 says, “We love, because he first loved us. If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him, that he who loves God should love his brother also.”
Abraham saw that God loved people and imitated Him by interceding for them. In so doing, by keeping covenant with God, all the nations of the earth are blessed, as the genealogy of Jesus Christ in Matthew’s Gospel shows.