Lot receives the angels

Cyril went on: And it is written thus: 'And two angels came to Sodom at evening. And Lot was sitting at the gate of Sodom. And Lot, seeing, rose up to meet them, and bowed with his face to the earth, and said: Behold, lords, turn aside into the house of your servant, and lodge, and wash your feet, and rising early you shall go away on your way. And they said: No. But we will lodge in the street. And he forced them, and they turned aside toward him, and they went into his house, and he made a drink for them. And he baked unleavened cakes for them, and they ate before they lay down.' For Lot, inasmuch as he was also of Abraham's blood, and had been reared in the laws of rightness, and had taken care of piety toward God in no small account, was sojourning at Sodom. And he was on them an incomer and a stranger both in race and in manner. 'For what fellowship has light with darkness? Or what portion has a believer with an unbeliever,' according to what is written? And having been stronger than the evils of the place, and going the road of life customary to him, he held to holy pursuits, and, honoring the law of hospitality as much as possible, sitting at the inlets of the town, he receives kindly those who run in at them, knowing the thing is dear to God. And when those who would bring the penalty on those who had run wild unbridled into wantonness had come (and it was a pair of angels), he meets them swiftly, and shows beforehand, as a clear sign of the kindness in him, the greeting. For he bowed with his face to the earth, and urges them to go home, and to revel in the laws of love. And they say: No, but we will lodge in the street; marking by this that they are strangers and without a hearth, and whetting, I think, the one who had chosen to show hospitality toward a more intense eagerness, and all but hinting with a fine grace that he would not fittingly let them go, being empty of a hearth and thrown out in the very crossroads; which the righteous man also understood, and forced them the more, and did not take the refusal as a prize, as from a weak and rather watery mind. So he houses them, and set unleavened breads, and made a drink. But these things the righteous man. And the Sodomites, sick with a naked and shapeless pleasure, going round the righteous man's chamber unholy, and having fallen beyond the shamelessness that comes to the utmost, thought it right that the customary things be let go for them to do; then, when they ought to have chosen hospitality, they wished to harm with the wantonness against nature. And they wished to disable Lot, who was turning them away from attempts so wild and most abominable, and he would perhaps have been caught even into the suffering itself, if those who save had not been there. 'For the men,' it says, 'stretching out their hands, drew Lot in toward themselves into the house, and they shut the door of the house. And the men who were at the door of the house they struck with sightlessness from small to great, and they were disabled seeking the door.' And the things of the help for him have not been measured in these only. For it is written again: 'And when dawn came, the angels were urgent with Lot, saying: Rising, take your wife and your two daughters whom you have, and go out, that you too may not perish with the lawlessnesses of the city.'