Tuesday of the 20th Week of Ordinary Time
The Lord's word came again to me, saying, "Son of man, tell the prince of Tyre, 'The Lord God says: "Because your heart is lifted up, And you have said, 'I am a god, I sit in the seat of God, In the middle of the seas;' Yet you are man, And no god, Though you set your heart as the heart of a god — Behold, you are wiser than Daniel. There is no secret that is hidden from you. By your wisdom and by your understanding you have gotten yourself riches, And have gotten gold and silver into your treasuries. By your great wisdom And by your trading you have increased your riches, And your heart is lifted up because of your riches —"
"'therefore the Lord God says: "Because you have set your heart as the heart of God, Therefore, behold, I will bring strangers on you, The terrible of the nations. They will draw their swords against the beauty of your wisdom. They will defile your brightness. They will bring you down to the pit. You will die the death of those who are slain In the heart of the seas. Will you yet say before him who kills you, 'I am God'? But you are man, and not God, In the hand of him who wounds you. You will die the death of the uncircumcised By the hand of strangers; For I have spoken it," says the Lord God.'"
I said that I would scatter them afar. I would make their memory to cease from among men; Were it not that I feared the provocation of the enemy, Lest their adversaries should judge wrongly, Lest they should say, 'Our hand is exalted; The Lord has not done all this.'"
Were it not that I feared the provocation of the enemy, Lest their adversaries should judge wrongly, Lest they should say, 'Our hand is exalted; The Lord has not done all this.'" For they are a nation void of counsel. There is no understanding in them.
How could one chase a thousand, And two put ten thousand to flight, Unless their Rock had sold them, And the Lord had delivered them up?
Vengeance is mine, and recompense, At the time when their foot slides, For the day of their calamity is at hand. Their doom rushes at them." For the Lord will judge his people, And have compassion on his servants, When he sees that their power is gone, That there is no one remaining, shut up or left at large.
Jesus said to his disciples, "Most certainly I say to you, a rich man will enter into the Kingdom of Heaven with difficulty. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through a needle's eye than for a rich man to enter into God's Kingdom."
When the disciples heard it, they were exceedingly astonished, saying, "Who then can be saved?"
Looking at them, Jesus said, "With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible."
Then Peter answered, "Behold, we have left everything and followed you. What then will we have?"
Jesus said to them, "Most certainly I tell you that you who have followed me, in the regeneration when the Son of Man will sit on the throne of his glory, you also will sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. Everyone who has left houses, or brothers, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my name's sake, will receive one hundred times, and will inherit eternal life. But many will be last who are first, and first who are last.
There's a thread running through all three of today's readings, and it's worth pulling on: the question of who we think we are.
The prince of Tyre is a fascinating figure — not a cartoonish villain, but someone genuinely gifted. Wise, successful, wealthy. And somewhere along the way, that success curdled into something dangerous. "I am a god," he says. Notice how the prophet Ezekiel doesn't mock the prince's accomplishments — the wealth was real, the wisdom was real. What went wrong wasn't the gifts themselves. It was the story he started telling himself about where those gifts came from.
This is closer to home than we might like to admit. Consider how easy it is, after years of hard work, after building something — a career, a family, a reputation — to quietly begin believing we did it ourselves. Not in any dramatic way. Just a slow, almost imperceptible drift toward self-sufficiency. Toward not needing anyone, including God.
Then comes the Gospel, and Jesus drops something genuinely startling on the disciples: wealth itself creates a kind of gravity that pulls us away from the Kingdom. The disciples are astonished — and that astonishment is honest. Because if the successful, the accomplished, the self-made can't make it, then who can?
And Jesus says: with God, all things are possible.
The movement here is from self-reliance to surrender. Not a passive surrender, but the active, daily practice of holding our gifts loosely — recognizing they were given, not manufactured.
Peter's question is ours too: "We've given things up. Does it matter?" And Jesus answers with a kind of extravagance that defies calculation. The last become first. The economy of the Kingdom runs on different math entirely.
As we move through this day, consider:
Where have we quietly started believing our own press — taking credit for gifts that were given to us?
What would it look like, in one concrete area of life today, to hold something a little more loosely?
And what might we be clinging to that's actually keeping us from something larger?