If we had to describe the evils which encompass the
soul when it sets the affections of its will upon
temporal blessings, neither ink nor paper would
suffice us and our time would be too short. For from
very small beginnings a man may attain to great evils
and destroy great blessings; even as from a spark of
fire, if it be not quenched, may be enkindled great
fires which set the world ablaze.
All these evils have their root and origin in one
important evil of a privative kind that is contained
in this joy -- namely, withdrawal from God. For even
as, in the soul that is united with Him by the
affection of its will, there are born all blessings,
even so, when it withdraws itself from Him because of
this creature affection, there beset it all evils and
disasters proportionately to the joy and affection
wherewith it is united with the creature; for this is
inherent in[557] withdrawal from God.
Wherefore a soul may expect the evils which assail
it to be greater or less according to the greater or
lesser degree of its withdrawal from God. These evils
may be extensive or intensive; for the most part they
are both together.
2. This privative evil, whence, we say, arise
other privative and positive evils, has four degrees,
each one worse than the other. And, when the soul
compasses the fourth degree, it will have compassed
all the evils and depravities that arise in this
connection.[558] These four degrees are well
indicated by Moses in Deuteronomy in these words,
where he says: 'The beloved grew fat and kicked. He
grew fat and became swollen and gross. He forsook God
his Maker and departed from God his Salvation.'[559]
3. This growing fat of the soul, which was loved
before it grew fat, indicates absorption in this joy
of creatures. And hence arises the first degree of
this evil, namely the going backward; which is a
certain blunting of the mind with regard to God, an
obscuring of the blessings of God like the obscuring
of the air by mist, so that it cannot be clearly
illumined by the light of the sun.
For, precisely when the spiritual person sets his
rejoicing upon anything, and gives rein to his desire
for foolish things, he becomes blind as to God, and
the simple intelligence of his judgment becomes
clouded, even as the Divine Spirit teaches in the
Book of Wisdom, saying: 'the use and association of
vanity and scorn obscureth good things, and
inconstancy of desire overturneth and perverteth the
sense and judgment that are without malice.'[560]
Here the Holy Spirit shows that, although there be
no malice conceived in the understanding of the soul,
concupiscence and rejoicing in creatures suffice of
themselves to create in the soul the first degree of
this evil, which is the blunting of the mind and the
darkening of the judgment, by which the truth is
understood and each thing honestly judged as it is.
4. Holiness and good judgment suffice not to save
a man from falling into this evil, if he gives way to
concupiscence or rejoicing in temporal things. For
this reason God warned us by uttering these words
through Moses: 'Thou shalt take no gifts, which blind
even the prudent.'[561]
And this was addressed particularly to those who
were to be judges; for these have need to keep their
judgment clear and alert, which they will be unable
to do if they covet and rejoice in gifts. And for
this cause likewise God commanded Moses to appoint
judges from those who abhorred avarice, so that their
judgment should not be blunted with the lust of the
passions.[562]
And thus he says not only that they should not
desire it, but that they should abhor it. For, if a
man is to be perfectly defended from the affection of
love, he must preserve an abhorrence of it, defending
himself by means of the one thing against its
contrary. The reason why the prophet Samuel, for
example, was always so upright and enlightened a
judge is that (as he said in the Book of the Kings)
he had never received a gift from any man.[563]
5. The second degree of this privative evil arises
from the first, which is indicated in the words
following the passage already quoted, namely: 'He
grew fat and became swollen and gross.'[564]
And thus this second degree is dilation of the
will through the acquisition of greater liberty in
temporal things; which consists in no longer
attaching so much importance to them, nor troubling
oneself about them, nor esteeming so highly the joy
and pleasure that come from created blessings.
And this will have arisen in the soul from its
having in the first place given rein to rejoicing;
for, through giving way to it, the soul has become
swollen with it, as is said in that passage, and that
fatness of rejoicing and desire has caused it to
dilate and extend its will more freely toward the
creatures.
And this brings with it great evils. For this
second degree causes the soul to withdraw itself from
the things of God, and from holy practices, and to
take no pleasure in them, because it takes pleasure
in other things and devotes itself continually to
many imperfections and follies and to joys and vain
pleasures.
6. And when this second degree is consummated, it
withdraws a man wholly from the practices which he
followed continually and makes his whole mind and
covetousness to be given to secular things.
And those who are affected by this second degree
not only have their judgment and understanding
darkened so that they cannot recognize truth and
justice, like those who are in the first degree, but
they are also very weak and lukewarm and careless in
acquiring knowledge of, and in practising, truth and
justice, even as Isaias says of them in these words:
'They all love gifts and allow themselves to be
carried away by rewards, and they judge not the
orphan, neither doth the cause of the widow come unto
them that they may give heed to it.'[565]
This comes not to pass in them without sin,
especially when to do these things is incumbent upon
them because of their office. For those who are
affected by this degree are not free from malice as
are those of the first degree. And thus they withdraw
themselves more and more from justice and virtues,
since their will reaches out more and more in
affection for creatures.
Wherefore, the characteristics of those who are in
this second degree are great lukewarmness in
spiritual things and failure to do their duty by
them; they practise them from formality or from
compulsion or from the habit which they have formed
of practising them, rather than because they love
them.
7. The third degree of this privative evil is a
complete falling away from God, neglect to fulfil His
law in order not to lose worldly things and
blessings, and relapse into mortal sin through
covetousness. And this third degree is described in
the words following the passage quoted above, which
says: 'He forsook God his Maker.'[566]
In this degree are included all who have the
faculties of the soul absorbed in things of the world
and in riches and commerce, in such a way that they
care nothing for fulfilling the obligations of the
law of God. And they are very forgetful and dull with
respect to that which touches their salvation, and
have a correspondingly greater ardour and shrewdness
with respect to things of the world.
So much so that in the Gospel Christ calls them
children of this world, and says of them that they
are more prudent and acute in their affairs than are
the children of light in their own.[567] And thus
they are as nothing in God's business, whereas in the
world's business they are everything. And these are
the truly avaricious, who have extended and dispersed
their desire and joy on things created, and this with
such affection that they cannot be satisfied; on the
contrary, their desire and their thirst grow all the
more because they are farther withdrawn from the only
source that could satisfy them, which is God.
For it is of these that God Himself speaks through
Jeremias, saying: 'They have forsaken Me, Who am the
fountain of living water, and they have digged to
themselves broken cisterns that can hold no
water.'[568] And this is the reason why the covetous
man finds naught among the creatures wherewith he can
quench his thirst, but only that which increases it.
These persons are they that fall into countless
kinds of sin through love of temporal blessings and
the evils which afflict them are innumerable. And of
these David says: Transierunt in affectum cordis.[569]
8. The fourth degree of this privative evil is
indicated in the last words of our passage, which
says: 'And he departed from God his Salvation.'[570]
To this degree come those of the third degree whereof
we have just spoken.
For, through his not giving heed to setting his
heart upon the law of God because of temporal
blessings, the soul of the covetous man departs far
from God according to his memory, understanding and
will, forgetting Him as though He were not his God,
which comes to pass because he has made for himself a
god of money and of temporal blessings, as Saint Paul
says when he describes avarice as slavery to
idols.[571]
For this fourth degree leads a man as far as to
forget God, and to set his heart, which he should
have set formally upon God, formally upon money, as
though he had no god beside.
9. To this fourth degree belong those who hesitate
not to subject Divine and supernatural things to
temporal things, as to their God, when they ought to
do the contrary, and subject temporal things to God,
if they considered Him as their God, as would be in
accordance with reason.
To these belonged the iniquitous Balaam, who sold
the grace that God had given to him.[572] And also
Simon Magus, who thought to value the grace of God in
terms of money, and desired to buy it.[573] In doing
this he showed a greater esteem for money; and he
thought there were those who similarly esteemed it,
and would give grace for money.
There are many nowadays who in many other ways
belong to this fourth degree; their reason is
darkened to spiritual things by covetousness; they
serve money and not God, and are influenced by money
and not by God, putting first the cost of a thing and
not its Divine worth and reward, and in many ways
making money their principal god and end, and setting
it before the final end, which is God.
10. To this last degree belong also those
miserable souls who are so greatly in love with their
own goods that they take them for their god, so much
so that they scruple not to sacrifice their lives for
them, when they see that this god of theirs is
suffering some temporal harm. They abandon themselves
to despair and take their own lives for their
miserable ends, showing by their own acts how
wretched is the reward which such a god as theirs
bestows.
For when they can no longer hope for aught from
him he gives them despair and death; and those whom
he pursues not to this last evil of death he condemns
to a dying life in the griefs of anxiety and in many
other miseries, allowing no mirth to enter their
heart, and naught that is of earth to bring them
satisfaction. They continually pay the tribute of
their heart to money by their yearning for it and
hoarding of it for the final calamity of their just
perdition, as the Wise Man warns them, saying:
'Riches are kept to the hurt of their owner.'[574]
11. And to this fourth degree belong those of whom
Saint Paul says: Tradidit illos in reprobum sensum.[575]
For joy, when it strives after possessions as its
final goal, drags man down to these evils. But those
on whom it inflicts lesser evils are also to be
sorely pitied, since, as we have said, their souls
are driven far backward upon the way of God.
Wherefore, as David says: Be not thou afraid when
a man shall be made rich: that is, envy him not,
thinking that he outstrips thee, for, when he dieth,
he shall carry nothing away, neither shall his glory
nor his joy descend with him.[576] |