Envy as a self-consuming disease

God 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.