Alas, how subtly that craftsman of deception deceives us, with what blindness he veils the eyes of our mind, so that—greedy of rejoicing—we do not discern wherein we might more justly rejoice; or, desiring to be enriched with riches, that we do not know which riches we should incomparably prefer to which. For to rejoice is indeed good; but he who rejoices, if he does not rejoice in that wherein he ought, what he rejoices in cannot be good. Indeed the robber rejoices when he has seized what he desired; the drunkard rejoices when he has found occasion for the longed-for drinking; the adulterer rejoices when he has attained the enjoyment of the body he coveted: but although rejoicing is good, to rejoice in these things and the like is a great evil.
These things and the like are what the world, doomed to perish with its lovers, wishes us to rejoice in. These are the things we ought to repudiate, that we may rejoice ineffably in a good conscience, in holiness of conduct, in the acquisition of virtues, in the gift of God, and in the promise of the future kingdom. To be enriched with riches too is a great good; but to be enriched from a source whence you ought not is not a wealth to be held, but a calamity to be detested. For nothing is more calamitous, nothing more wretched, than he who grows by unjust acquisitions, whom frauds and robberies make rich.
Those are the riches we should aspire to, which can at once adorn us and protect us, which we can neither acquire unwillingly nor lose, which arm us against hostile assaults, set us apart from the world, commend us to God, enrich and ennoble our souls, are with us, are within us. Our riches must be reckoned to be: chastity, which makes us chaste; justice, which makes us just; piety, which makes us pious; humility, which makes us humble; gentleness, which makes us gentle; innocence, which makes us innocent; purity, which makes us pure; prudence, which makes us prudent; temperance, which makes us temperate; and charity, which makes us dear to God and to men, mighty in virtues, despisers of the world, and followers of all good things.
These are the holy virtues not of all men, but of the saints; the resources not of the proud rich, but of the humble poor; the patrimony of hearts, the incorruptible riches of character, in which none abound except those who from the heart renounce those carnal riches. And although these too are good things, having been created by the good God; yet because they are common to good and bad alike, spiritual men strive to despise them, that they may attain to those incomparably better things which are the proper possession of all good men: since that good which the bad also have is not such as that which only the good have. When the wicked have a bodily good, it is their reward; when the just have it, it is not their reward, but a temporal solace.
Likewise the loss of a temporal good becomes for the just a training, and for the unjust a punishment: because the just man, seized by desire of heavenly things, whether he has or loses all temporal things, feels it not at all; while the wicked man cannot lose without grief what he holds with delight. For this reason, therefore, riches must be fled with the whole heart by those who serve God as soldiers—riches which those who wish to have them do not seek without toil, do not find without difficulty, do not keep without care, do not possess without anxious delight, do not lose without grief. But the Apostle says to the soldiers of Christ: «I would have you to be without solicitude» (1 Cor. 7:32); and, «The root of all evils is avarice:
which some coveting have erred from the faith, and have entangled themselves in many sorrows» (1 Tim. 6:10). And thus this earthly wealth is, to those by whom it is viciously loved, not the material of pleasures, but of sorrows. Wherefore it is expedient that the resources of the Church be possessed, so that from them those may live who serve not the world—whose fleeting joys they repudiate—but God, whose ineffable goods they desire.