WORD 2day: Tuesday, 12th week in Ordinary time
June 23, 2026 - 2 Kings 19: 9-11,14-21,31-36; Matthew 7: 6, 12-14
A look at the scene reported in the first reading, fills us with a nostalgia: will something like that not happen today, and save us all from this maddening politics of war and hatred that surrounds us? Just on the verge of being conquered and subjugated, the people of Israel miraculously experience the liberating hand of God! What a great wonder it would have been!
But we forget to see the other elements that were there: to total submission of kind, the good will of the rest, the support of the prophet and everything else came together with the will of God. Today, aren't we testimonies to the blunders made by human pride, occasions lost by human ego, evils brought in by exploitation of the other and disasters created by human greed! How can something like that what we see in the first reading take place today?
This what Jesus is warning us of in the Gospel... throwing your pearls to the pigs! You have pearls directly from the hands of the Lord, handed over to you in love: your life, your soul, your goodness, your image and likeness to God, your peace, your serenity, your happiness, your loving relationships, your capacity for goodness... how are you treating them all?
The sad fact is we are too prone to throw our pearls to the pigs like our greed, our passion for pleasure, our desire for power, our insensitive consideration of the other, our wish to exploit the other, our craving to dominate every thing for our own happiness and and satisfaction! This group is the crowd that enters through the wide and spacious gate! Are we in their numbers?
Or are we in the group of the saints - the ones who have given the right place to these pearls and adorned their world with it. They enter though the narrow gate...and do we wish to enter with them, with that slender minority which loves truly, walks justly and lives fully their life, mindful of their pearls?