Homily on Envy

1God is good, and He gives good things to those who deserve them. The devil is evil, and he is the craftsman of every kind of wickedness. And just as abundance follows the good, so envy follows the devil. Let us guard ourselves, then, brothers, from the passion of envy, so that we do not become partners in the works of the opponent and find ourselves condemned under the same judgment as he is. For if the one who is puffed up falls into the judgment of the devil, how will the envious person escape the punishment prepared for the devil?

No passion grows in human souls more destructive than envy. It causes the least grief to those outside, but first and chiefly it is an evil belonging to the one who harbors it. Just as rust consumes iron, so envy consumes the soul that holds it. Or rather, just as they say vipers are born by eating through the womb that conceived them, so envy by its nature consumes the soul that is in labor with it. For envy is grief at a neighbor's prosperity. That is why grief and despondency never leave the envious person alone.

Has his neighbor's field produced a rich harvest? Does his household overflow with all the goods of life? Does joy never leave the man? All these things are food for the disease and an increase of pain for the envious person. So he is no different from a naked man being wounded by everyone. Is someone brave? Is he in good health? These things strike the envious person. Is another more graceful in appearance? That is another wound for the envious person. Does so-and-so surpass the many in the advantages of the soul? Is he admired and envied for his wisdom and power of speech? Does another grow rich and win honor splendidly through his gifts and his sharing with the needy, and does he receive great praise from those he has helped? All these things are blows and wounds, striking the envious person in the very middle of his heart.

And the harsh thing about the disease is that he cannot even speak of it. He hangs his head, and he is downcast, and he is troubled, and he laments, and he is undone by the evil. But when he is asked about his suffering, he blushes to make public his misfortune, that "I am envious and bitter, and the good things of my friend wear me down, and I grieve over my brother's cheerfulness, and I cannot bear the sight of another person's good things, but I make my neighbor's prosperity into my own misfortune." These are the things he would say if he wanted to speak the truth. But since he chooses to say none of them, he keeps the disease deep within, smoldering and consuming his inward parts.

So he neither calls in a doctor for the disease, nor can he find any medicine as a defense against the passion, even though the Scriptures are full of these remedies. Instead he waits for one relief from the evil: if he should somehow see one of those he envies fall. This is the limit of his hatred: to see the envied person become wretched instead of blessed, to see the one envied become pitiable. Then he makes peace, and he is a friend, when he sees him weeping, when he watches him mourning. He does not rejoice with him when he is cheerful, but he weeps with him when he laments. And he pities the change in his life, the fall from what he had to what he has now—not out of love for humanity or because he is compassionate, but so that by extolling in words his former state he can make his misfortune heavier. He praises the child after its death and honors it with countless eulogies—how beautiful to look at, how quick to learn, how well suited to everything—though he would never have given it a kind word while it was alive.

2But if he sees many people joining in the praise, he changes course again and envies the dead man. He admires the wealth after it has been lost. He praises and exalts the beauty of the body, or its strength and vigor, after illness has come. In short, he is an enemy of what is present and a friend of what is perishing. What could be more destructive than this disease? It is the corruption of life, the ruin of nature, hostility toward the gifts God has given us, opposition to God. What drove the arch-evil demon into his war against humanity? Was it not envy? Through it he was openly exposed as a fighter against God—grieving at God for the great gift given to man, and taking vengeance on man because he could not reach God. Cain is shown doing the very same things: the devil's first disciple, taught by him both envy and murder, the kindred lawless deeds that Paul also joined together when he said, "full of envy, murder" (Romans 1:29). What then did Cain do? He saw the honor given by God, and he burned with envy, and he killed the one who was honored, so that he might strike at the one who gave the honor. Unable to fight against God, he fell into brother-murder. Let us flee, brothers, from a disease that teaches fighting against God, that is the mother of man-slaying, the confusion of nature, the forgetting of kinship, the most irrational of disasters. Why are you grieved, man, when you have suffered nothing terrible? Why do you make war on someone who has good things, who has diminished nothing of yours? And if you are angered even while receiving benefits, are you not plainly envying your own advantage? Such was Saul, who made the excess of benefits the occasion for his war against David. First, after being freed from madness by that all-harmonious and divine music, he tried to pierce his benefactor with a spear. Then, after being saved together with his army from the enemies, and freed from the shame over Goliath, still—because in the victory songs the dancing women attributed to David ten times the credit for what had happened: "David struck down his ten thousands, and Saul his thousands"—because of this one phrase, and the testimony that came from the truth itself, he first tried to become his murderer with his own hand and to kill him from ambush. Then, after making him a fugitive, he did not even so put an end to his hatred, but finally marched out against him with three thousand chosen men and searched the deserts. If he had been asked the reason for the war, he would certainly have said: the man's good deeds. For at the very time of the pursuit, when he was caught sleeping and lay ready for slaughter before his enemy, and was again saved by the righteous man, who guarded against laying hands on him, he was not softened even by this benefit. But again he gathered an army, and again he pursued—until, caught a second time by the same man in the cave, he made David's virtue shine more brightly and made his own wickedness more evident. Envy is the most difficult kind of enmity to manage. For benefits make those who are hostile for other reasons gentler; but the envious and malicious person is provoked further by being treated well. And the greater the benefits he receives, the more he is angered and grieved and annoyed. He is more burdened by the power of his benefactor than grateful for what is done for him.

4One thing, at least, someone might even praise in this evil: the more violently it is stirred, the more grievous it becomes to the one who possesses it. For just as arrows shot with force, when they strike something hard and resistant, rebound upon the one who hurled them, so the movements of envy, causing no grief to the person envied, become blows upon the envious person himself. For who, by grieving, ever diminished his neighbor's good things? He only consumed himself, wasting away with sorrow. Indeed, those sick with envy are thought to be more destructive than venomous creatures themselves. For those creatures inject their poison through a wound, and little by little the corruption eats away what has been bitten. But some suppose that the envious inflict harm through their eyes alone, so that vigorous bodies, blooming in the full flower of their youthful prime, waste away under their envious gaze, and their whole bulk is suddenly destroyed, as if a deadly stream flowed from the envious eyes, defiling and destroying. I dismiss that account as a popular tale brought into the women's quarters by old wives. But this I do say: the hateful demons, when they find choices suited to themselves, use those choices in every way for their own purpose, so that they even employ the eyes of envious people in the service of their own will. Do you not shudder, then, at making yourself the servant of a deadly demon? Do you welcome an evil through which you will become an enemy of those who have done no wrong, and an enemy of God, who is good and ungrudging? Let us flee this unbearable evil. It is the serpent's teaching, the demons' invention, the enemy's sowing, a down payment of punishment, a hindrance to piety, a road to Gehenna, a loss of the kingdom. The envious are somehow recognizable even by their very face. Their eye is dry and dim, their cheek downcast, their brow contracted; their soul is thrown into confusion by the passion, and does not hold the standard of truth in judging matters. No action done according to virtue is praiseworthy among them, no power of speech adorned with dignity and grace, nothing else that is admired and esteemed. Just as vultures are drawn to foul smells, flying over many meadows and many pleasant, fragrant places, and flies pass by what is healthy and hurry to a wound, so the envious do not even look at the splendors of life or the greatness of noble achievements, but fasten on what is rotten. And if someone happens to stumble—as often happens in human affairs—they make it public, and from such things they want to identify the man. They are like wicked painters who mark the forms of their subjects by a crooked nose, or by some scar or mutilation, whether from nature or from some accident. They are skilled at twisting things for the worse, at spitting on what is praiseworthy, and at slandering virtue by means of a neighboring vice. For they call the courageous man reckless, and the self-controlled man unfeeling; the just man harsh, the prudent man a schemer. They slander the magnificent man as vulgar, and the generous man as a spendthrift; again, the thrifty man they call miserly. In short, every form of virtue does not lack among them a name borrowed from the opposite vice.

5What then? Shall we stop the discourse at the accusation of the evil? But this is only half the healing. To show the sick person the magnitude of his disease, so as to make him take the evil seriously, is not useless. But to leave him there, without leading him by the hand toward health, is nothing other than to send the sick person away abandoned to his sickness. What then? How might we avoid suffering the disease from the beginning, or escape it once we have been caught? First, if we judge nothing human to be great or supernatural: not the wealth that exists among people, not the glory that blooms and fades, not the body's vigor. For we are not called to define the good in things that pass away, but to share in eternal and true goods. So the rich man is not yet enviable because of his wealth; nor the ruler because of the bulk of his dignity; nor the strong man because of his bodily power; nor the wise man because of his abundance of speech. For these are instruments of virtue for those who use them well; they do not in themselves possess blessedness. The one who uses them badly is pitiable, like a man who takes a sword he received for defense against enemies and willingly wounds himself with it. But if a man handles present things well and according to right reason, and is a steward of what comes from God, not treasuring them up for his own enjoyment, he is rightly praised and loved because of his brother-loving and sharing character. Again, someone excels in wisdom, and has been honored with the word of God, and is an interpreter of sacred oracles. Do not envy such a person, and do not ever wish the interpreter of sacred things to fall silent, if by the grace of the Spirit some acceptance and praise from the hearers follows him. For the good is yours, and the gift of teaching was sent to you through your brother, if you are willing to receive it. No one blocks up a gushing spring; no one covers his eyes when the sun shines, nor envies those things, but prays to share in their enjoyment. But when spiritual speech gushes in the Church, and a devout heart springs from the gifts of the Spirit, do you not hold out your ears with gladness? Do you not receive the benefit with gratitude? Instead, the applause of the hearers bites you, and you would wish that neither the one being helped nor the one praising existed. What defense will these things have before the judge of our hearts? By nature, then, one must consider the good of the soul to be beautiful. And the one overflowing with wealth, and thinking great things because of his power, and his body's vigor, and using well what he has—love him and cherish him, as one who possesses the common instruments of life, if indeed he handles these things according to right reason: so that by the supply of his money he is ungrudging to those in need, and with his body he provides service to the weak; and he considers all the rest of his abundance no more his own than that of anyone in need. But the one who is not so disposed toward these things, consider him wretched rather than enviable, since he has greater starting points for being bad.

6For this is to be destroyed from a greater supply and effort. If wealth is a provision for injustice, the rich man is pitiable; but if it is a service for virtue, envy has no place, since the benefit from these things lies open to all in common—unless, perhaps, by the excess of his wickedness a man envies himself his own good things. In general, when you have looked over human things with your reasoning and fixed your gaze on what is truly beautiful and praiseworthy, you would be far from judging any corruptible and earthly thing blessed and enviable. And for the one who is in this state, and is not struck with awe at worldly things as if they were great, it is impossible for envy ever to come near.

But if you absolutely desire glory, and you wish to be conspicuous above the many, and for this reason you cannot bear to be second—for this too is indeed an occasion for envying—then transfer your love of honor, like some stream, to the acquisition of virtue. Do not absolutely wish to be rich by every means, nor to be esteemed from the affairs of the world. For these things are not in your power. But be just, and self-controlled, and prudent, and courageous, and patient in sufferings endured for piety. For in this way you will both save yourself, and for greater good things you will have greater distinction. For virtue is in our power, and can be acquired by the one who loves labor; but the possession of money, and bodily beauty, and the weight of dignities, are not in our power.

If, then, virtue is both a greater good and more lasting, and has the acknowledged preference from all, this is what we must pursue. And it is impossible for it to be born in a soul that is not clean from the other passions, and most of all from envy. Do you not see how great an evil hypocrisy is? This too is a fruit of envy. For the doubleness of character comes to human beings especially from envy, when, holding hatred in the depths, they display a surface colored over with love—like rocks in shallow water, which, covered by shallow water, become an unseen evil for the unwary.

If, then, death has flowed to us from there as from a spring, and loss of good things, and estrangement from God, and confusion of laws, and the overturning of all the beautiful things of life together, let us obey the Apostle, and let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another (Galatians 5:26); but rather let us be kind, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as also God forgave us—in Christ Jesus our Lord, with whom be glory to the Father with the Holy Spirit, to the ages of ages. Amen.