Jesus Christ Is All My Riches

Nobody you know says out loud, “I am a god.” But plenty of us do the arithmetic that means it. We calculate the number that would finally let us stop worrying, and then we live as though reaching it would make us safe. Ezekiel puts a name on that arithmetic today, and the name is uglier than we’d like. The prince of Tyre said with his mouth what we tend to say with our balance sheets. He got rich by being clever, and his cleverness persuaded him that he needed nothing from anyone, God included. Then Jesus tells the Twelve that a rich man has about the same odds of entering the kingdom that a camel has of squeezing through a sewing needle. The disciples are horrified, and they ask the only honest question available: then who can be saved?

Today’s saint answered that question with his life. Louis of Toulouse held a claim on the throne of Naples and handed it to his brother. He kept repeating one line until it wore a groove in him: “Jesus Christ is all my riches; he alone is sufficient for me.” He was dead at 23, and he’d already settled what most of us spend forty years avoiding.

The Readings

First Reading: Ezekiel 28:1-10

The word of the Lord came to me: “Son of man, say to the prince of Tyre, Thus says the Lord God:

“Because your heart is proud, and you have said, ‘I am a god, I sit in the seat of the gods, in the heart of the seas,’ yet you are but a man, and no god, though you consider yourself as wise as a god— you are indeed wiser than Daniel; no secret is hidden from you; by your wisdom and your understanding you have gotten wealth for yourself, and have gathered gold and silver into your treasuries; by your great wisdom in trade you have increased your wealth, and your heart has become proud in your wealth—

therefore thus says the Lord God: “Because you consider yourself as wise as a god, therefore, behold, I will bring strangers upon you, the most terrible of the nations; and they shall draw their swords against the beauty of your wisdom and defile your splendor. They shall thrust you down into the Pit, and you shall die the death of the slain in the heart of the seas. Will you still say, ‘I am a god,’ in the presence of those who slay you, though you are but a man, and no god, in the hands of those who wound you? You shall die the death of the uncircumcised by the hand of foreigners; for I have spoken, says the Lord God.”

Gospel: Matthew 19:23-30

And Jesus said to his disciples, “Truly, I say to you, it will be hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” When the disciples heard this they were greatly astonished, saying, “Who then can be saved?” But Jesus looked at them and said to them, “With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”

Then Peter said in reply, “Lo, we have left everything and followed you. What then shall we have?” Jesus said to them, “Truly, I say to you, in the new world, when the Son of man shall sit on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. And every one who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands, for my name’s sake, will receive a hundredfold, and inherit eternal life. But many that are first will be last, and the last first.”

Scriptural Analysis

Ezekiel writes from Babylon. He was deported in 597 BC with the first wave of exiles, and from there he prophesies against the nations that circled Judah and cheered when Jerusalem fell. Tyre gets three full chapters, more than anyone but Egypt. Tyre was a Phoenician island city off the coast of what is now Lebanon, and it grew fabulously wealthy by running the shipping lanes of the eastern Mediterranean. When Ezekiel addresses “the prince of Tyre,” he’s putting the whole nation on the stand. The king embodies what the country had become.¹

Notice the charge. Tyre worshipped Baal and Melqart, and Ezekiel could have led with that. Instead, the indictment is self-deification. “I am a god, I sit in the seat of the gods, in the heart of the seas.” Tyrian kings were known to claim divine rank, so the accusation lands as a general rebuke of the dynasty.² And the Hebrew behind “your heart is proud” is more physical than our translation lets on. It reads more like “your heart is lifted up,” raised, exalted, swollen. The word for heart runs through this chapter over and over. Ezekiel wants you to know exactly where the infection sits, and he locates it in an organ rather than in a harbor or a treasury.

“You are indeed wiser than Daniel” probably carries a sting. Daniel was the byword for wisdom that came by revelation rather than cleverness (Daniel 2:19-23; 5:13-14), which makes him a pointed comparison for a man whose wisdom came from trade negotiations. The Fathers seized on the verse for a different reason. Augustine noted that Daniel, of all people, prays “we have sinned,” and asked how anyone else can claim to stand clean.³ If Daniel confessed, you confess.

Then Ezekiel traces the sequence, and it’s worth walking slowly. Wisdom produces skill in trade. Trade produces wealth. Wealth produces a proud heart. Nothing in that chain is evil on its own. Skill is good. Commerce is good. Wealth in itself is a created good. What ruins the prince is the last link, where accumulated security quietly rewrites his understanding of who he is. That’s why the Catechism can put this passage under the sin of pride and define sin itself as “love of oneself even to contempt of God,” a revolt driven by “the will to become ‘like gods’ (Gen 3:5), knowing and determining good and evil.”⁴ The prince of Tyre is Adam in a counting house.

The sentence fits the crime with a precision that’s almost cruel. He claimed a throne “in the heart of the seas,” and he will die “the death of the slain in the heart of the seas.” The waters he ruled become the waters that close over him. And he will die “the death of the uncircumcised,” which stung, because Tyre practiced circumcision. To be thrown into the netherworld among the uncircumcised was a public humiliation, the ancient equivalent of being buried outside the fence.

The Fathers looked through the prince and saw someone standing behind him. Origen read “the prince of Tyre” as a spiritual power rather than merely a man, and Theodoret of Cyr said plainly that the devil has called himself God and persuaded people to worship him instead.⁵ Jerome stayed closer to the ground and compared the prince to corrupt Roman provincial governors, men entrusted with authority who then “assume for themselves the name of gods.”⁶ Every abuse of power runs on that borrowed script.

So Ezekiel hands us a diagnosis. Now Matthew hands us the prognosis, and then the cure.

Yesterday the rich young man walked away sad, unable to let go of what he owned (Matthew 19:16-22). Today’s Gospel is Jesus turning to the disciples while that man is still in sight and telling them what they just watched. It will be hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom. Then he pushes it past hard: easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle. The camel was the largest domesticated animal in Palestine, and the eye of a stitching needle is the smallest opening anyone in that crowd handled daily.⁷ Rabbinic literature used a similar figure, an elephant going through a needle’s eye, precisely to name the impossible.⁸ You may have heard that “the Needle” was a low gate in Jerusalem that camels could squeeze through on their knees. There’s no evidence for it.⁹ Aquinas already knew that gloss in the thirteenth century, reported that its author was unknown, and declined to lean on it.¹⁰ The saying is hyperbole, and it’s meant to knock the wind out of you.

The disciples are winded. “Who then can be saved?” Their shock makes sense inside their inherited categories, where prosperity was read as a sign of God’s favor (Deuteronomy 28:1-14). If the visibly blessed can’t get in, nobody can.¹¹ But Aquinas raises a sharper question about that reaction. Most people in Israel were poor. So why do the disciples’ minds jump to everyone? Because, he says, they understood the Lord to include the poor who are rich in desire, and there are more of those than there are rich men.¹² Sit with that. You do not need money to have this disease. You need only to want it the way the prince of Tyre had it.

Aquinas then makes the distinction that makes this passage livable. Jesus says a rich man enters “with difficulty,” and he does not say it is impossible. So Aquinas separates two men. One has riches and does not love them. For him, entry is hard. The other has riches, loves them, and places his hope in them. For him, entry is closed. Aquinas anchors it in Paul: “charge the rich of this world not to be highminded, nor to trust in the uncertainty of riches” (1 Timothy 6:17).¹³ Everything hangs on where your hope is parked, and the size of the account tells you almost nothing about that.

And the Lord’s answer to the disciples is the hinge of the whole passage. “With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” Human nature cannot reach a supernatural end under its own power. No amount of willpower or good works gets a person to eternal life, because the goal is above the range of the nature attempting it.¹⁴ Aquinas puts it with his usual bluntness: man has from himself the power to sin, but to rise again and do the works of salvation he has nothing from himself without the help of God’s grace. He cites Romans 9:16 and Philippians 2:13, “it is God who works in you, both to will and to accomplish.”¹⁵ This is the Catholic answer to the whole problem, and it’s why the passage is good news rather than a threat. Ezekiel already saw where it had to go. The heart that lifted itself up cannot lower itself. God will have to give a new one (Ezekiel 36:26).

Peter, being Peter, does the accounting out loud. “We have left everything and followed you. What then shall we have?” Aquinas can’t resist the observation: Peter left a boat and a net. That’s the entire estate. And yet Peter is praised more for his affection than for the value of what he abandoned, because he let go with a will so ready that he would have left everything had he owned everything.¹⁶ If you have ever felt that your sacrifices are too small to count, that line is for you. The Lord weighs the letting go rather than the appraisal.

Then comes the promise, and it has two halves. The Twelve will sit on twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel. The verb here carries the sense of governing more than of handing down verdicts, which puts it in line with the authority to bind and loose that Jesus gives them elsewhere (Matthew 16:19; 18:18). He’s describing the apostles as founders and rulers of the messianic community, which is to say, of the Church.¹⁷ The second half is for everyone else. Anyone who has given up house or family or land for his name receives a hundredfold and inherits eternal life. Augustine read the hundredfold as spiritual goods, since the grace of God outweighs anything you surrendered, and infinitely, so the finite number stands in for the infinite. Origen also took it literally: give up a field and you will find many at your service; give up brothers and you will find every spiritual man a brother.¹⁸ Any Catholic who has walked into a parish in a strange city knows both are true.

“Many that are first will be last, and the last first.” On the heels of a conversation about money, the first are the affluent and the influential, and the last are the poor whose dignity gets overlooked. The rich young man, standing among the first, has just set himself up to join the last. The disciples, who are nobody, are being made first in front of him.¹⁹

Daily Application

Start with Aquinas’s question, because it cuts cleaner than any budget review. Do you have your possessions, or do they have you? There’s a reliable test, and it doesn’t involve a spreadsheet. Watch what happens inside you when something is threatened. When the market drops, when the job wobbles, when the repair estimate comes in high, what moves in your chest? A little concern is prudence. A cold drop in the stomach, a night of turning it over, a low-grade anger at God, that’s information. The prince of Tyre didn’t wake up one morning and decide to be a god. His heart got quietly lifted up by degrees, the way ours does, one reassuring balance at a time.

So the interior movement today’s readings ask for is dependence, and generosity comes after it. Before you can give anything away, you have to admit that you cannot pry your own fingers open. That admission is the whole point of “with God all things are possible.” The rich young man tried to handle it alone and left grieving. The right response is to bring the actual attachment to God by name, in prayer and in the confessional, and to ask him for the new heart Ezekiel promised, since the one you have is the one that lifted itself up in the first place. Grace is the source of the whole motion, start to finish.

Then let today’s saint show you what that grace looks like when it lands in a life. Louis of Toulouse was the son of Charles II of Naples and Sicily, kin to Saint Louis IX on one side and Saint Elizabeth of Hungary on the other. As a boy, he carried food out of the castle to the poor. At 14, he was handed over as a hostage to the court of Aragon in a political deal made by his father, and Franciscan friars tutored him there. He came out at 20 having decided to renounce his royal claim in favor of his brother Robert. He was ordained the next year, named bishop of Toulouse, and asked the pope for permission to become a Franciscan first. He wore the habit as a bishop and sometimes went out begging. He set aside 75 percent of his episcopal income to feed the poor and repair churches, and he fed 25 poor people at his own table every day. He died at 23, and Pope John XXII, one of his old teachers, canonized him in 1317. His liturgical feast is kept tomorrow, August 19.

Do not skip the strangest thing he did. Louis appointed a friar whose job was to correct him, in public if that’s what it took, and the friar actually did the job. Think about what that means. A young bishop with royal blood, already called a saint by his own diocese, understood that a lifted-up heart is invisible from the inside. So he built himself a structure that could see what he couldn’t. Call it humility with a schedule.

You can do a version of that this week. Give something away in an amount you can feel, because a gift you don’t notice teaches your heart nothing. And then hand somebody permission to tell you the truth about yourself: a spouse, a confessor, a friend who isn’t impressed by you. Ezekiel’s prince had no one like that, and a whole city sank with him.

Louis had almost nothing at the end and said he had everything. Repeat his line until it wears a groove in you, and mean it: Jesus Christ is all my riches, and he alone is enough.

---

Notes

1. ↑ The Navarre Bible: Major Prophets, note on Ezekiel 28:1-10 (Dublin: Four Courts Press).
2. ↑ The Navarre Bible: Major Prophets, note on Ezekiel 28:1-10.
3. ↑ St. Augustine, On the Merits and Forgiveness of Sins and on Infant Baptism 2.13.10; see also Sermon 397.1, both excerpted in Ezekiel, Daniel, ed. Kenneth Stevenson and Michael Glerup, Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture: Old Testament XIII (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2008), 92.
4. ↑ Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd ed. (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997), no. 1850, quoting St. Augustine, De civitate Dei 14.28; see also nos. 1866 and 2094 on pride and no. 2556 on detachment from riches.
5. ↑ Theodoret of Cyr, Commentary on Ezekiel 11.28, in Ezekiel, Daniel, ACCS OT XIII, 91.
6. ↑ St. Jerome, Commentary on Ezekiel 9.28.1-10, in Ezekiel, Daniel, ACCS OT XIII, 91.
7. ↑ Curtis Mitch and Edward Sri, The Gospel of Matthew, Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2010), 249.
8. ↑ Daniel J. Harrington, SJ, The Gospel of Matthew, Sacra Pagina 1 (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1991), 278, citing b. Berakhot 55b.
9. ↑ Harrington, The Gospel of Matthew, 278.
10. ↑ St. Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Gospel of Saint Matthew, chap. 19, lect. 1, no. 1602.
11. ↑ Harrington, The Gospel of Matthew, 278.
12. ↑ Aquinas, Commentary on Matthew, chap. 19, lect. 1, no. 1604.
13. ↑ Aquinas, Commentary on Matthew, chap. 19, lect. 1, nos. 1601-2.
14. ↑ Mitch and Sri, The Gospel of Matthew, 249.
15. ↑ Aquinas, Commentary on Matthew, chap. 19, lect. 1, no. 1605.
16. ↑ Aquinas, Commentary on Matthew, chap. 19, lect. 1, no. 1607.
17. ↑ Mitch and Sri, The Gospel of Matthew, 250; see also Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 765.
18. ↑ Aquinas, Commentary on Matthew, chap. 19, lect. 1, no. 1618, citing St. Augustine and Origen.
19. ↑ Mitch and Sri, The Gospel of Matthew, 251. [image-1]: Post-Image-8182026.jpg

Books Cited

As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

• Catholic Church, Catechism of the Catholic Church, Second Edition, Doubleday / Image, 2003
• Curtis Mitch and Edward Sri, The Gospel of Matthew, Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture (Baker Academic, 2010)
• Daniel J. Harrington, SJ, The Gospel of Matthew, Sacra Pagina 1 (Liturgical Press)
• Kenneth Stevenson and Michael Glerup, eds., Ezekiel, Daniel, Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture OT 13 (InterVarsity, 2008)
• University of Navarre, The Navarre Bible: Major Prophets, Four Courts Press, 2005
• St. Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew 13-28, Latin-English Opera Omnia (Emmaus Academic)