ON JEALOUSY AND ENVY. To be jealous of what you see to be good, and to envy those who are better, seems to some a slight and trifling crime, most beloved brethren; and while it is reckoned slight and trifling, it is not feared; while it is not feared, it is despised; while it is despised, it is not easily shunned; and so it becomes a blind and hidden ruin, which, while it is too little observed to be guarded against by the provident, secretly afflicts unwary minds.
Furthermore, the Lord has bidden us be prudent, and has charged us to watch with careful concern, lest the adversary—who is himself always watchful and always lying in wait—when he has crept into the breast, may kindle conflagrations from sparks, may exaggerate the greatest things from small ones, and while he flatters the slack and unwary with a gentler breeze and a softer blast, may, by stirring up storms and whirlwinds, contrive the ruins of faith and the shipwrecks of salvation and of life. Therefore, most beloved brethren, we must keep watch, and labor with all our strength, so that with anxious and full vigilance we may resist the raging enemy as he directs his darts against all the parts of the body by which we can be struck and wounded, according to what the apostle Peter forewarns and teaches in his epistle, saying:
'Be sober, be watchful, for your adversary the devil, like a roaring lion, goes about seeking something to devour.' He goes about each one of us, and like an enemy besieging those shut up within walls, he explores and tests whether there is any part of the members less stable and less faithful, by whose entrance he may penetrate to the inner parts. He offers to the eyes alluring forms and easy pleasures, so that by the sight he may destroy chastity. He tempts the ears with tuneful music, so that by the hearing of a sweeter sound he may loosen and soften Christian vigor. He provokes the tongue with reviling; he goads the hand by injurious provocations to the wantonness of slaughter. To make a man a cheat, he sets before him unjust gains; to capture the soul by money, he heaps up ruinous profits:
he promises earthly honors, that he may take away the heavenly; he displays false things, that he may steal away the true. And when he cannot deceive secretly, he threatens openly and plainly, holding out the terror of turbulent persecution, ever restless and ever hostile to vanquish the servants of God—crafty in peace, violent in persecution. Wherefore, most beloved brethren, against all the wiles of the devil, whether his deceitful snares or his open threats, the mind ought to stand instructed and armed, as ready always to repel as the enemy is always ready to assail.
And since his more frequent weapons are those that creep up secretly, and the more hidden and clandestine the shooting, the more grievously and the more constantly it ravages into our wounds because it is the less perceived—let us be vigilant to understand and to repel these also. Among them is the evil of jealousy and envy. And if anyone inspects this thoroughly, he will find that nothing is more to be guarded against by a Christian, nothing more carefully to be provided against, than that no one be seized by envy and spite; lest anyone, entangled in the blind snares of the deceiving enemy, while through jealousy a brother is turned to the hatred of his brother, should unawares be slain by his own sword. That we may gather this more fully and perceive it more plainly, let us recur to its head and to its origin.
Let us see whence jealousy arose, and when, and how it began. For an evil so destructive will more easily be shunned by us if both the origin and the magnitude of that evil be known. From this the devil, at the very beginnings of the world, both was the first to perish and brought others to perdition. He who was sustained by angelic majesty, he who was accepted and dear to God, after he beheld man made in the image of God, broke forth into jealousy with malevolent spite—not casting another down at the instigation of jealousy before he himself had first been cast down by jealousy; captive before captor, ruined before ruiner, while at the prompting of spite he snatches from man the grace of the immortality given to him, he too lost that which he had been before.
How great an evil is it, most beloved brethren, by which an angel fell, by which that lofty and glorious sublimity could be circumvented and overturned, by which he who deceived was himself deceived! Thenceforth envy ravages on the earth, while he who is to perish by spite obeys the master of perdition, while he imitates the devil who is jealous, as it is written: 'But through the envy of the devil death entered into the world.' They therefore imitate him who are of his party. From this, in fine, came the first hatreds of the new brotherhood; from this began unspeakable fratricides, while the unjust Cain was jealous of the just Abel, while the wicked man pursued the good man with envy and spite.
So greatly did the fury of rivalry prevail to the consummation of the crime, that neither the love of a brother, nor the enormity of the wickedness, nor the fear of God, nor the penalty of the offense was considered. He was unjustly oppressed who had first shown forth righteousness; he suffered hatred who had not known how to hate; he was slain impiously who, dying, did not resist. And that Esau was the enemy of his brother Jacob—it was jealousy: for because the latter had received the father's blessing, the former blazed up against him with the torches of spite into the hatred of persecution. And that Joseph's brethren sold him—the cause of selling descended from rivalry: after he had simply, as a brother to brethren, related what had been shown to him as prosperous in his visions, the malevolent mind burst out into envy.
What else, too, provoked king Saul to hate David, to desire by oft-repeated persecutions to kill the innocent, merciful man, patient with mild gentleness, than the goad of jealousy? Because, when Goliath had been slain and so great a foe destroyed by divine aid and favor, the wondering people leaped forth into the praises of David with the suffrage of acclamation, Saul conceived the furies of rivalry and persecution out of spite. And, not to make it long by recounting individuals, let us attend to the destruction of a people that perished once for all. Did not the Jews perish from this, while they preferred to envy Christ rather than to believe? Disparaging the mighty works which He did, they were deceived by blinding jealousy and could not open the eyes of their heart to the knowledge of divine things.
Considering these things now, most beloved brethren, let us fortify against so great a ruin of evil our hearts dedicated to God, watchfully and bravely. Let the death of others profit our salvation; let the punishment of the imprudent confer health upon the provident. Now there is no reason for anyone to suppose that this evil is contained under one form, or is shut up within brief bounds and a narrow end. Widely extends the manifold and fertile ruin of jealousy. It is the root of all evils, the fountain of disasters, the seed-bed of offenses, the matter of faults. From it hatred rises, from it animosity proceeds. Jealousy inflames avarice, when a man cannot be content with his own, seeing another wealthier. Jealousy excites ambition, when one perceives another greater in honors.
When jealousy blinds our senses and reduces the secrets of the mind under its dominion, the fear of God is despised, the teaching of Christ is neglected, the day of judgment is not foreseen. Pride puffs up, cruelty exasperates, treachery prevaricates, impatience shakes, discord rages, anger boils, and he who has become the slave of another's power can no longer restrain or govern himself. Hence the bond of the Lord's peace is broken, hence brotherly charity is violated, hence truth is adulterated, unity is cleft; men rush forth to heresies and to schisms, while priests are disparaged, while bishops are envied, while one either complains that he himself was not rather ordained, or disdains to endure another as set over him.
Hence one kicks back, hence one rebels, proud out of jealousy, perverse out of rivalry—an enemy not of the man but of his honor, out of animosity and spite. Truly, what a moth of the soul it is, what a corruption of thoughts, how great a rust of the breast, to be jealous in another either of his virtue or his felicity—that is, to hate in him either his own merits or the divine benefits; to turn another's goods to one's own evil; to be tormented at the prosperity of illustrious men; to make the glory of others one's own punishment; to apply, as it were, certain executioners to one's own breast, to set torturers upon one's own thoughts and feelings, who would lacerate one with inward torments, who would strike the secrets of the heart with the talons of malevolence. To such a one neither is food glad nor can drink be pleasant.
He is always sighing and groaning and grieving; and while spite is never laid aside by the envious, the besieged breast is lacerated without intermission day and night. Other evils have a limit, and whatever is transgressed is ended with the completion of the offense. In the adulterer the crime ceases when the defilement is perpetrated; in the robber the wickedness comes to rest when the murder is committed; the captured plunder sets a stop to the plunderer's rapacity, and the completed fraud sets a measure to the forger. Jealousy has no limit—it is an evil enduring perpetually and a sin without end; and the more he who is envied advances with better success, the more does the envious man blaze up into a greater conflagration with the fires of spite.
Hence the threatening countenance, the grim aspect, the pallor in the face, the trembling on the lips, the gnashing of the teeth, the raging words, the unbridled reproaches, the hand prompt to the violence of slaughter—even if for the time it be empty of a sword, yet armed with the hatred of a frenzied mind. And therefore the Holy Spirit says in the Psalms: 'Be not jealous of him who walks prosperously in his way.' And again: 'The sinner will watch the righteous and gnash his teeth at him. But the Lord will laugh at him, for He foresees that his day will come.' These the blessed apostle Paul designates and marks out, saying: 'The poison of asps is under their lips, and their mouth is full of cursing and bitterness.'
'Their feet are swift to shed blood; destruction and misery are in their ways, and the way of peace they have not known; nor is the fear of God before their eyes.' Far lighter is the evil and less the danger when the limbs are wounded by the sword. The cure is easy where the wound is plain, and what is visible is swiftly brought to health by the medicine coming to aid. The wounds of jealousy are abstruse and hidden, nor do they admit the remedy of a healing cure, since they have shut themselves up within the recess of the conscience with a blind grief. Whoever you are who are envious and malignant, mark how insidious, how destructive, how hostile you are to those whom you hate. You are the enemy of no one's salvation more than your own. Whoever he is whom you pursue with jealousy can slip away and avoid you.
You cannot flee from yourself. Wherever you are, your adversary is with you; the enemy is always in your breast; the ruin is shut up within; you are bound and fettered with an inextricable chain of bonds; with jealousy lording it over you, you are a captive, and no consolations come to your aid. To persecute a man who belongs to the grace of God is a persistent evil; to hate the happy is a calamity without remedy. And therefore, most beloved brethren, providing against this danger, the Lord—lest anyone through jealousy of a brother should run into the snare of death—when His disciples asked Him which of them should be the greatest, said: 'Whoever shall be least among you all, he shall be great.' By His answer He cut off all rivalry; He plucked up and cut away every cause and material of biting envy.
It is not permitted to a disciple of Christ to be jealous, not permitted to envy. There can be among us no contention for exaltation. From humility we grow to the heights; we have learned whereby we may please. Lastly, the apostle Paul too, instructing and admonishing that we who, enlightened by the light of Christ, have escaped the darkness of nocturnal conduct should walk in the deeds and works of light, writes and says: 'The night has passed, but the day has drawn near. Let us therefore cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light. Let us walk becomingly as in the day, not in revelings and drunkenness, not in lusts and indecencies, not in strifes and jealousy.'
If darkness has departed from your breast, if the night has been scattered thence, if the gloom has been wiped away, if the splendor of day has illumined your senses, if you have begun to be a man of light, do the things that are Christ's, because Christ is light and day. Why do you rush into the darkness of jealousy? Why do you wrap yourself in the cloud of spite? Why do you extinguish, by the blindness of envy, all the light of peace and charity? Why do you return to the devil whom you had renounced? Why do you become like Cain? For that whoever is jealous of his brother and holds him in hatred is bound by the crime of homicide, the apostle John declares in his epistle, saying: 'He who hates his brother is a murderer: and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.' And again:
'He who says he is in the light and hates his brother is in darkness even until now, and walks in darkness, and knows not whither he goes, because the darkness has blinded his eyes.' 'He who hates his brother,' he says, 'walks in darkness and knows not whither he goes.' For he goes unwitting into Gehenna; ignorant and blind, he is hurled headlong into punishment, departing, namely, from the light of Christ who warns and says: 'I am the light of the world. He who follows Me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.' Now he follows Christ who stands fast in His precepts, who walks along the way of His teaching, who follows His footsteps and paths, who imitates that which Christ both taught and did—according to what Peter also exhorts and admonishes, saying:
'Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow His footsteps.' We ought to remember by what name Christ calls His people, by what title He names His flock. He calls them sheep, that Christian innocence may be likened to sheep; He calls them lambs, that simplicity of mind may imitate the simple nature of lambs. Why does a wolf lurk under the clothing of sheep? Why does he who falsely pretends to be a Christian defame the flock of Christ? To put on the name of Christ and not to walk along the way of Christ—what else is it than a prevarication of the divine name, than a desertion of the way of salvation?
Since He Himself teaches and says that he comes to life who keeps the commandments, and that he is wise who hears His words and does them, and that he too shall be called the greatest teacher in the kingdom of heaven who shall have taught and so done—then what has been well and usefully preached will profit the preacher, if what is uttered by the mouth be fulfilled by deeds that follow. But what did the Lord more frequently instill into His disciples? What among salutary admonitions and heavenly precepts did He charge to be observed and kept more than that, with the same love wherewith He Himself loved His disciples, we too should love one another? But how does he hold either the Lord's peace or charity who, jealousy intervening, can be neither peaceable nor loving?
Therefore the apostle Paul also, when he set forth the merits of peace and charity, and when he firmly asserted and taught that neither faith, nor almsgiving, nor even the very suffering of a confessor and martyr would profit, unless one had kept the bonds of charity whole and inviolate, added and said: 'Charity is magnanimous, charity is kind, charity is not jealous'—teaching, namely, and showing that whoever shall be magnanimous and kind and free from jealousy and spite is able to hold charity. Likewise in another place, when he admonished that a man, now full of the Holy Spirit and by heavenly birth made a son of God, should follow nothing but spiritual and divine things, he sets it down and says:
'And I indeed, brethren, could not speak to you as to spiritual men, but as to carnal, as to babes in Christ. I fed you with milk, not with meat; for you were not yet able to bear it, nor indeed are you now able, for you are still carnal. For where there is jealousy and contention and dissensions among you, are you not carnal and walking according to man?' We must trample down, most beloved brethren, the vices and sins of the flesh, and the hostile defilement of the earthly body must be trodden under by spiritual vigor, lest, while we are again rolled back to the conduct of the old man, we be entangled in deadly snares—the apostle providently and wholesomely forewarning this very thing. 'Therefore, brethren,' he says, 'let us not live according to the flesh. For if you live according to the flesh, you shall begin to die:
but if by the Spirit you mortify the deeds of the flesh, you shall live. For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God.' If we are sons of God, if we have now begun to be His temples, if, having received the Holy Spirit, we live holily and spiritually, if we have lifted our eyes from earth to heaven, if we have raised to things supernal and divine a breast full of God and Christ, let us do nothing but what is worthy of God and Christ, as the apostle rouses and exhorts: 'If you have risen with Christ,' he says, 'seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God: relish the things that are above, not the things that are on earth. For you are dead, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.'
'When Christ who is your life shall appear, then you also shall appear with Him in glory.' We therefore who in baptism, according to the carnal sins of the old man, are both dead and buried, who by the heavenly regeneration have risen with Christ, let us both think and do the things that are Christ's, as the same apostle again teaches and admonishes, saying: 'The first man was of the slime of the earth, the second man from heaven. As was he of the slime, so are they also who are of the slime; and as is the heavenly, so also are they that are heavenly. As we have borne the image of him who is of the slime, let us bear also the image of Him who is of heaven.' But we cannot bear the heavenly image unless, in that which we have now begun to be, we present the likeness of Christ.
For this is to have changed what you were, and to have begun to be what you were not: that the divine birth may shine in you, that by a deifying discipline the likeness may answer to God the Father, that by the honor and praise of your living God may be made glorious in man—He Himself exhorting and admonishing, and to those who glorify Him promising a mutual return. 'Those,' He says, 'who glorify Me I will glorify, and he who despises Me shall be despised.' Forming and preparing us for this glorification, the Lord and Son of God, instilling the likeness of God the Father, says in His Gospel: 'You have heard that it was said, You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say to you:
love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be like your Father who is in heaven, who makes His sun to rise upon the good and the evil, and rains upon the just and the unjust.' If to men it is glad and glorious to have sons resembling themselves, and then it delights the more to have begotten, if the offspring answers to the father with like features—how much greater is the joy in God the Father, when one is so born spiritually that in his acts and praises the divine nobility is proclaimed! What palm of righteousness it is, what a crown, to be such a one of whom God does not say: 'I have begotten and exalted sons, but they have despised Me.' Let Christ rather praise you and invite you to the reward, saying:
'Come, you blessed of My Father, receive the kingdom which has been prepared for you from the foundation of the world.' By these meditations the mind must be strengthened, most beloved brethren; by exercises of this kind it must be made firm against all the darts of the devil. Let the divine reading be in the hands, the thought of the Lord in the mind; let prayer be unbroken and altogether unceasing; let the work of salvation persevere. Let us be always occupied with spiritual acts, so that, as often as the enemy approaches, as often as he attempts to draw near, he may find the breast closed against him and armed. For the crown of the Christian man is not one only, that which is received in the time of persecution.
Peace also has its crowns, with which, after a varied and manifold struggle, we are crowned as victors over a prostrate and subdued adversary. To have subdued lust is the palm of continence. To have fought back against anger, against injury, is the crown of patience. To despise money is a triumph over avarice. It is the praise of faith to endure the adversities of the world through confidence in things to come. And he who is not proud in prosperity wins glory from humility. And he who is inclined to the mercy of cherishing the poor obtains the recompense of a heavenly treasure. And he who knows not how to envy, and who, being of one mind and gentle, loves his brethren, is honoured with the reward of love and peace.
In this arena of virtues we run daily; without any interval of time we press on toward these palms and crowns of righteousness. That you also, who had been possessed by jealousy and spite, may be able to attain to them, cast away all that malice by which you were formerly held, and be reformed unto the way of eternal life by the steps of salvation. Pluck out from your breast the thorns and briars, that the Lord's seed may enrich you with fruitful produce, that the divine and spiritual harvest may abound into a plentiful crop. Vomit out the poison of gall, shut out the venom of discord; let the mind that the serpent's spite had infected be cleansed, let all the bitterness that had settled within be soothed by the sweetness of Christ.
From the sacrament of the cross you take both food and drink. Let the wood which at Marah availed in figure to the sweetness of taste, avail you in truth to the soothing of a calmed heart, and you will not labour for a remedy to restore your health. Heal yourself from that whereby you had been wounded. Love those whom before you hated; cherish those whom you envied with unjust disparagements. Imitate the good, if you can follow them; but if you cannot follow them, at least rejoice with them and congratulate those who are better. Make yourself a partaker with them in united love; make yourself a co-heir with them in the fellowship of charity and the bond of brotherhood. Your debts shall be remitted to you, when you yourself have remitted; your sacrifices shall be received, when you come as a peacemaker to God.
Your thoughts and your acts shall be directed by God, when you ponder those things that are divine and righteous; as it is written: 'Let the heart of a man think on righteous things, that his steps may be directed by God.' And you have many things to ponder. Ponder Paradise, to which Cain does not return, who slew his brother out of jealousy. Ponder the heavenly kingdom, to which the Lord admits none but the harmonious and those of one mind. Ponder that those alone can be called the sons of God who are peacemakers, who by birth and the divine law correspond, united, to the likeness of God the Father and of Christ.
Ponder that we stand under the eyes of God, that we run the course of our conversation and life with Him Himself looking on and judging, and that we can then at last attain to behold Him, if we now please by our deeds Him who sees us, if we render ourselves worthy of His grace and indulgence, if we who are to please Him forever in His kingdom first please Him here in this world.