Covetousness

THE second of the seven chief sources of sin is Covetousness, or avarice.

Covetousness or avarice, whichever we may choose to call it, is an excessive love for money or landed property or any other kind of riches.

It is an excessive love or desire for money; because a moderate desire for it, free from all excess, is not sinful at all, at least not for ordinary people, although it might be sinful for those favored souls who have left the world to enter the religious life. Monks and nuns have vowed themselves to holy poverty of their own free will, and therefore are bound, as individuals at least, to keep their hands entirely clean from money. But of course with the rest of mankind it is not so. People living in the world have made no vow of poverty; on the other hand, it is their duty to provide for themselves, and for wife and children or others who may be dependent upon them. And therefore for people in general a certain moderate and well regulated desire for the world's goods, and for the coins and bills with which they may obtain them, is no sin whatever; ordinarily it is even a duty of their state of life. So it is only when the love of riches passes the bounds of moderation and goes to excess, that it becomes the capital sin of Covetousness.

Now this excess, which might change a moderate and praiseworthy desire for money into the sin of avarice, would be in the desire itself, and not in the sum desired. One can be avaricious in regard to five dollars as well as in regard to five thousand dollars. What is still more astounding, I have heard it said that there are children who are avaricious regarding pennies; and it is certainly true that this debasing passion does lay hold upon some persons very early in life. On the other hand, it's possible for the man or woman who owns a million dollars, to be free from avarice. It's possible, but it's extremely difficult. For a millionaire to be generous and charitable in adequate proportion to the immense wealth bestowed upon him, for him to remember that he holds his wealth as a trust from God, to be disposed to part with it rather than sin for the sake of it, and thus to keep his love for his property well regulated and free from excess, is certainly very hard, even though it is possible; and in this as well as in many other respects it is far easier for the poor man to save his soul than for the rich man.

Nevertheless we should notice that it's not the love for an excessive sum which makes avarice, but the excessive love for any sum. And in this connection I remember about a miser, a woman, who died a most miserable death. She had lived alone and very secretly, like the misers in stories and plays. She was always in fear of being robbed, and would never let anybody enter her door. And last thing at night and first thing in the morning, in place of night and morning prayers, this woman would take out her gold, piece by piece, and polish and wipe it and feast her eyes upon it, counting and weighing it in her hands, fondling and almost worshipping it. Well, it was on a winter day that they found her dead. Her body was wasted away as though she had been starving, and there was neither food nor fuel in the house. They found her corpse sitting cold and rigid at the table just as she had died, and on the table was the lamp, which had burned out, and her gold. Twenty guineas, or about one hundred dollars of our money, that was the whole sum, all that she had and all that she had left behind her; and for that small amount she had closed her heart to human sympathy, ruined her body and poisoned her soul.

Now this illustrates the truth that avarice can feed itself on small sums as well as on large sums. An excessive love for money then in any sum, is always avarice. And it is in this sense that the Holy Bible speaks so often of the love of money and condemns it so severely. "Nothing is more wicked than the covetous man," says the Book of Ecclesiasticus; "there is not a more wicked thing than to love money; for such a one setteth even his own soul to sale" (Ecclus., X., 9-10).

It's a sober fact that there have been people in this world who would sell their souls for money. Let us hope that there are few consumed with such diabolical avarice as that would be. There are persons though, and it is to be feared only too many of them, who would not sell their souls perhaps in order to acquire riches or to preserve or increase their riches, but who would readily commit mortal sin. Now, covetousness of that kind, covetousness so extremely immoderate that a person is always ready and anxious to commit mortal sin to satisfy it, is itself mortal sin. But it seems probable that most people, especially most of the Catholics who are tainted with this vice, are covetous in a milder degree, namely, they are tainted with a love of money excessive, and therefore sinful, but not so wildly excessive as to make them ready to commit mortal sin for the sake of it, and therefore only venially sinful.

So we see that covetousness, like pride, may be either mortal or venial. Like pride also, unless we check it and trample it down in ourselves, it will work a fearful amount of injury to our souls; because aside from its own sinfulness, it will be the source of a multitude of other sins of the most various kinds.

One vice which often springs from avarice, is hardness of heart. The human heart naturally is warm and generous and pitiful. The needs or the sorrows of another readily appeal to it, and it is easily touched and moved to sympathy and mercy. It is willing and anxious to give, to help, to relieve want or pain and console misery wherever it can. That is the heart in its healthy condition, the heart as God gave it to us. But let the vice of avarice get a strong grip upon it, let it be once wrapped up in the excessive love for riches, and it becomes cold as ice and hard as stone, until it seems to have lost all feeling. The covetous man and woman will know that there is want and misery within a stone's throw of their doors, and will not move hand or foot to relieve them. They will see a human being hungry or shivering before their very eyes, and will neither clothe nor feed him. They will break the strict precepts of charity and almsgiving over and over again, and by breaking them be guilty of many sins. Human wretchedness no longer touches them. Generosity and pity have left their souls, and there remain to them only hardness of heart and miserable selfishness. It is on account of covetousness, some say, more than on account of any other particular vice, that "man's inhumanity to man makes countless thousands mourn."

Many sins of discontent and murmuring likewise take their rise from covetousness. There is an uneasy soul, with fear of losing what one has, or sadness at not getting what one has not; and in some extreme cases blasphemy follows, with foolish questioning of God's goodness and grumbling and complaining. On the other hand, where the desires and the cares of riches are kept down within their proper limits, free from excess—in a word, where there is no covetousness— these other sins and evils are likewise avoided.

Now and then crimes of a more violent nature, such as thefts and robberies, assaults and even murders, spring from avarice, being prompted by the immoderate love of money. And frequently this vice is also the source of sins on the part of people doing business with one another. They can't get rich fast enough in an honest way to satisfy their greed for money, and hence there are defalcations and dishonest bankruptcy, bad faith and betrayals, slowness in paying debts, treachery, deceits, lies, cheating in business, and almost every other kind of meanness.

Worse still, in some cases people have actually fallen away from the Church and lost their faith through covetousness. Very poor, lukewarm faith it must have been, but such as it was, covetousness has made an end of it. In our country especially, where Catholics are called upon almost continually to support the Church and its institutions with their money offerings, this has sometimes happened. And indeed it isn't greatly surprising in our day to see some lukewarm, avaricious soul apostatize from the Church rather than give his little towards it, when this very thing was known to occur even in the ancient Church of St. Paul's time. St. Paul tells us of "men corrupted in mind, and who are destitute of the truth, supposing gain to be godliness. But godliness with contentment is great gain," he says. "For we brought nothing into this world; and certainly we can carry nothing out; but having food and wherewith to be covered, with these we are content. For they that will become rich," St. Paul continues, "fall into temptation and into the snare of the devil, and into many unprofitable and hurtful desires, which drown men into destruction and perdition. For the desire of money is the root of all evils; which some coveting, have erred from the faith, and have entangled themselves in many sorrows" (I. Tim., VI., 5 - 10). Surely then if there were people who "erred from the faith" through their avarice at the very beginning of the Church, we need not be startled at seeing such things now.

Indeed, the excessive "desire of money," the greed for riches, which we call avarice or covetousness, is "the root of all evils;" there is not a sin or an evil which does not sometimes spring from avarice; and it is very properly classed as one of the seven chief sources of sin.

And this vice of avarice seems to be flourishing in our times more vigorously and more universally than at any former period. How often nowadays do we hear it said that commercialism is the spirit of the age, that this is the age of commercialism. And what is commercialism? Simply a grand-sounding name for money-making. The business men are the rulers of our age. They are the real power behind the thrones. The millionaires are its models. The promoters, trust-organizers and lucky speculators are its heroes, and its favorite motto is contained in the words which a great poet wrote three hundred years age: "Put money in thy purse." Shakespeare gave those words to the villain of his play; but a modern playwright might fitly give them to his heroes and heroines.

There have been centuries long before our birth, when nobility and chivalry gave men their ideals, when faith was the spirit of the age, when philosophy, poetry and music still appealed to the great multitude, and architecture and sculpture swayed the minds of men. We read about those times in history, but we see them no more. And when we close the book and gaze around us, we perceive that the ideal of our day is neither the saint nor the scholar, neither the soldier nor the poet, but rather the man who can scrape together the largest fortune in the shortest time, and then in the worst taste make the biggest display of his wealth. Thus, with the vast bulk of people, music and poetry and nobility, and religion itself, are crowded out by commercialism. And thus, money-making and money-saving are twin-spirits, which come nearer just now to controlling the world than ever before. Control it completely though they never can nor shall. Now, as always in past and future, "God's in His heaven, all's right with the world;" and God's religion is on this earth to stay while the earth stays; and wherever that religion is, there will always be hundreds of business men with whom even their business is secondary to their faith; business men as full of feeling and charity as they are full of business, warm with life and with generous human sympathy, though other millions of their kind may be dead and cold from avarice.

"Charge the rich of this world not to be high-minded," St. Paul said, "nor to trust in the uncertainty of riches, but in the living God (Who giveth us abundantly all things to enjoy); to do good, to be rich in good works, to give easily, to communicate to others, to lay up in store for themselves a good foundation against the time to come; that they may seize hold on the true life" (I. Tim., VI., 17-19).

That is the true wealth, that "good foundation," which we can lay up for ourselves in heaven by being ever merciful and charitable on this earth. Those are the true riches, those which we gather for ourselves where "the true life" is, in the golden future which stretches out through all eternity, beyond death and the grave. Those were the only riches which our divine Saviour cared for. When He came down upon this earth, He might be millionaire or pauper. He chose to be poor. He was so very poor that He could say: "The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air nests; but the Son of Man hath not where to lay his head" (Matt., VIII., 20). Those too were the only riches of His blessed Mother and of nearly all His holy saints. And if we be fortunate enough to gain that everlasting treasure, then whether we should have been poor or wealthy during this brief life, all will be well with us.

In order to secure this most blessed end, let us guard ourselves against the excessive love of earthly riches. May God teach us to look upon money sensibly and rightly and to use it properly, not to worship it, not to desire or love it immoderately, but to part with it from a willing heart in full proportion to our means wherever religion or charity demands. May He make us always generous where generosity is needed, and shield us to the end from the sordid vice of avarice.