Ostium Catholic

Ezekiel's oracle against the prince of Tyre names a transgression that is available to anyone who becomes sufficiently successful: the category error of concluding that human achievement has changed the nature of the achiever. A god am I. The wisdom was real. The trading that built the wealth was real. The intelligence was genuine. And the conclusion drawn from all of it was precisely wrong: he was a man, not a god, and the arrival of his murderers would establish this beyond further argument.

The Deuteronomy psalm adds the structural context: a people who forgot who was the cause of their victories. They thought their own hand had won. God's response is not rage but something more disorienting - if they believe their own power produced the outcome, he will let them discover what happens without his hand. The day of disaster is close. The LORD shall do justice for his people, but the people first have to exhaust the mythology of self-sufficiency.

For God all things are possible. Jesus says this in direct response to the disciples' astonishment at the camel-needle image. The camel does not get through the needle by becoming more flexible or by the needle becoming larger. Divine action is required - and this is the actual account of how any good thing happens, including the things that look like they happened through human effort.

Peter's question is the question of someone who has genuinely given things up: what will there be for us? Jesus answers with a specific list and a specific promise. The hundredfold is real. The giving-up was not a loss but an opening. The last will be first.

The early adult years often run on the operating assumption that the self is the primary agent of what the self achieves. The wisdom and intelligence are real, the effort is genuine, and the conclusion that begins to form is the prince of Tyre's. The corrective is not self-deprecation but accurate accounting: for God all things are possible - including the things that look like they happened through your intelligence.

Where in your life has the prince of Tyre's logic begun to operate - where your wisdom and intelligence and accumulated competence have started to feel like sufficiency? Name it. Then say: for God all things are possible. Over that specific area. See what changes.

Lord, I am a man, not a god, however I may have started thinking otherwise when things went well. For you all things are possible. Let me receive what I have built as gift rather than as evidence of my own sufficiency. Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us. Amen.