You may subscribe yourself at the Ascension site here and receive notifications in your email, or just follow along on my blog. Bible in One Year Readings Index
The Burning of Sodom (Camille Corot)
Day 9 Sodom and Gomorrah
Lot and Family Escaping (Peter Paul Rubens)
"Stand firm and hold to the Traditions which you were
taught by us, either by word of mouth or by letter.” (2
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A Commentary
Sodom and Gomorrah
The Great Adventure: Session 4 Patriarchs Part 1
Understanding the Scriptures - The Didache Series (Chapter 5, page 95 - 97)
The cities of Sodom and Gomorrah had built up such a sinful reputation that God had decided something had to be done. Abraham pleaded with God not to destroy the town if there be just a few righteous.
Even though Lot himself had kept some of his family virtuous, what the angels found in Sodom was bad. Lot took in the angels and then the people of Sodom surrounded the house and demanded Lot turn them over to them. Not knowing what to do, Lot offered his daughters to the men surrounding the house - well that wasn't a good idea either.
The angels warned Lot that they would destroy the city, and he would have to get his family out quickly. Lot and his daughters made it out, but Lot's wife stopped and looked back and was turned into a pillar of salt.
Everything Lot had was destroyed, and everything that he had considered civilization was gone. The blooming plain with its prosperous cities was a sunken, barren wasteland - today the area is called the Dead Sea.
Lot's two daughters then took matters into their own hands and feeling that they would never have any children, since all of Sodom and its people were destroyed, they slept with their father. Both became pregnant and these incestuous unions produced sons who were the fathers of two more nations, the Moabites and the Ammonites - both enemies of Israel.
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Day 10: Traditions of Men versus Sacred Tradition
CHALLENGE: “Catholics should not depend on Tradition. Jesus says Tradition makes void the word of God (Matt. 15:6; cf. Mark 7:8, Col. 2:8).
DEFENSE: Jesus did say that the Pharisees nullified God’s word for the sake of their tradition, but he did not condemn tradition itself.
Indeed, Scripture’s attitude toward apostolic Tradition is positive. Tradition is important to every person and every group of people. It represents our education, our culture, everything that has been handed on to us from previous generations. Tradition is—by definition—what is handed on. The term comes from the Latin word tradere , “to hand on.”
Some traditions, like some of the Pharisees’ traditions, can be harmful. Others, being of merely
human origin, are not authoritative. Scripture lumps both under the heading “traditions of men.”
But not all traditions are in this category.
For Christians, the Faith handed down to us from Christ and the apostles is of unparalleled importance. In Catholic circles, this passing down of the Faith is referred to as “Sacred Tradition” or “Apostolic Tradition” (with a capital “T” to distinguish it from other, lesser, “lowercase” traditions).
Initially, the apostles handed on the Faith orally—by preaching—but with time some of them and their
associates wrote the New Testament documents, which together with the Old Testament comprise
Sacred Scripture. Since Scripture has been handed down to us from the apostles, it is the inspired,
written part of Sacred Tradition.
Whether or not an item of Tradition was written in Scripture, it is still important and binding. Thus the
New Testament exhorts the reader to maintain Sacred Tradition (1 Cor. 11:2; 2 Thess. 3:6).
Another noteworthy passage is 2 Timothy 2:2, in which Paul instructs his protégé, “what you have
heard from me before many witnesses entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.”
Bearing in mind that Paul wrote this letter just before he died (cf. 2 Tim. 4:6–8), Paul is exhorting the
transmission of Sacred Tradition across generations of Christian leaders—from his generation, to
Timothy’s generation, to the ones that will follow.
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