Fighting avarice is not merely correcting a bourgeois character flaw: it is tearing from the heart the vice Saint Paul calls "the root of all evils" (1 Tm 6:10)[1]. Avarice does not look the way we imagine. It is not reserved for the old miser counting his coins in the shadows; it is that movement, present in everyone, that makes the hand clench around what it holds, multiply safety nets, push away giving, and gradually confuse happiness with having. The Catechism defines it by linking it to the tenth commandment:
"The tenth commandment forbids greed and the desire for an immoderate appropriation of earthly goods; it forbids unbridled covetousness arising from the immoderate passion for riches and their power." — Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 2536[2]
It is a sin rarely confessed, because it disguises itself as virtue. It wears the clothes of prudence, foresight, responsibility, household economy. The miser never calls himself a miser: he calls himself "reasonable." And yet spiritual tradition holds it to be one of the most dangerous of the seven capital sins, because it hardens the heart, closes the hand to the poor, and sets at the center of life an idol rival to God — the one Jesus calls "Mammon" (Mt 6:24)[3].
This article is devoted to the practical path: how to fight avarice, by what concrete means the heart moves from clutching at goods to the freedom to receive them, use them, and give them. It takes the path of combat — the direct struggle against the vice — and refers, for the practice of giving which is its remedy, to almsgiving, and, for the positive virtues of a free relationship to goods, to detachment and evangelical poverty. For the Church's overall teaching on wealth, see What Does the Church Say About Money?. It belongs to the series of battles against the capital sins, alongside the fight against pride, envy, anger, gluttony, lust, and acedia.
Why fight avarice?
"The root of all evils"
Before fighting avarice, one must measure what it produces. Saint Paul, writing to Timothy, gives it a fearful primacy among the disorders of the heart:
"For the root of all evils is the love of money. Having become attached to it, some have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many torments." — First Letter to Timothy 6:10[4]
The warning is precise. It is not money that is the "root of all evils" — money is a neutral instrument, a real but subordinate good — but the love of money, philargyria, the desire that turns having into an end rather than a means. Where that love settles in, it corrupts everything: it distorts justice, hardens charity, stifles faith. Saint Paul adds that those who give themselves to it "have pierced themselves with many torments": avarice, like envy, punishes first the one who carries it.
A desire that is never satisfied
The second reason to fight avarice lies in its very nature: it is a desire without end, a thirst that grows the more it is watered. Qoheleth had observed this with disenchanted lucidity:
"He who loves money never has enough money, and he who loves abundance reaps nothing: this too is mere vanity." — Qoheleth (Ecclesiastes) 5:9[5]
Avarice promises security and peace; it gives only the anxiety of losing and the desire to have more. The rich man is never rich enough, because what he pursues — satisfaction through having — recedes as he advances. It is the pierced barrel of the Danaids transposed into the heart: one keeps pouring, and it never fills. Sirach draws a grave warning from this:
"He who loves gold cannot remain just, he who chases after gain lets himself be led astray. Many have fallen for having loved gold [...] Gold is a trap for those who make an idol of it." — Sirach (Ben Sira) 31:5–8[6]
The idolatry of Mammon
The third reason is the gravest: avarice is, at its root, an idolatry. Saint Paul does not shy away from the word: "this greed for possession, which is idolatry" (Col 3:5)[7]. For money, when loved for itself, takes God's place: it becomes what one puts one's security, hope, and meaning of life in. Jesus states the choice with no way out:
"No one can serve two masters [...]. You cannot serve both God and Money." — Gospel according to Saint Matthew 6:24[8]
Christ does not set God in competition with an object, but with a rival cult. Mammon — the Aramaic name for personified wealth — is a false divinity that demands sacrifices, organizes a whole existence, and promises happiness. Fighting avarice is therefore, at bottom, a battle of faith: choosing whom to serve. On this point, see the full analysis in What Does the Church Say About Money?.
What exactly is avarice?
Combat requires precise discernment, for the word "avarice" covers realities that must be distinguished, so as neither to feel guilty wrongly — nor to excuse oneself cheaply. Saving for one's children is not avarice; managing one's goods prudently is not avarice. Where does the boundary lie?
Saint Thomas's definition: the immoderate love of possessing
Saint Thomas Aquinas devotes question 118 of the Secunda Secundae to avarice (avaritia). His definition is surgically precise: avarice is an immoderate love of possessing (immoderatus amor habendi), which can be taken in two ways. On the one hand, it is a disorder toward one's neighbor, when one acquires or keeps goods in contempt of justice; on the other, it is an interior disorder, the inordinate affection for riches, when the heart clings to them more than is fitting[9].
The mainspring of avarice is thus a reversal of order: exterior goods, which are made to serve life, become what one serves. Money, which should flow like a means, is held back like an end. Saint Thomas makes a point of capital importance for the battle: avarice is a capital vice, and it can be, depending on the case, mortal or venial sin. It becomes mortal when love of riches prevails over love of God and neighbor — when, to acquire or keep, one accepts offending God or harming others; it remains venial when the attachment, without going that far, simply exceeds measure[10].
The golden mean: between avarice and prodigality
For Saint Thomas, the right relationship to exterior goods belongs to a virtue, liberality, which holds the golden mean between two opposite vices: avarice, which holds back and hoards, and prodigality, which squanders without measure[11]. Money is therefore neither to be idolized nor wasted: it is to be well used. Virtue lies not in fleeing money, but in liberal mastery of it — knowing how to acquire justly, keep with measure, and give with joy.
| Avarice (vice by deficiency) | Liberality (virtue) | Prodigality (vice by excess) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Relationship to goods | Holding back, hoarding | Acquiring justly, using with measure | Squandering without discernment |
| Movement of the heart | Clenching, fear of losing | Freedom, peace | Carelessness, headlong flight |
| Toward the neighbor | Refusing to give | Giving fittingly and with joy | Giving badly, without order |
| Root | Distrust, false security | Trust, charity | Vanity, inconstancy |
| Fruit | Slavery to having | Free mastery of goods | Ruin, disorder |
Avarice of possessions and avarice of the heart
One distinction is decisive for the battle: one can be rich without being avaricious, and poor while being so. Avarice is not first in the purse, but in the heart. Saint Francis de Sales said this in a page of the Introduction to the Devout Life that has remained famous, through the image of the apothecary:
"There is a difference between having poison and being poisoned. Apothecaries almost all keep poisons to use them on various occasions, but for all that they are not poisoned, because they do not have the poison in their body, but in their shop. So you may have riches without being poisoned by them, provided you keep them in your house or in your purse, and not in your heart." — Saint Francis de Sales, Introduction to the Devout Life, III, 14[12]
That is the exact target of the battle: not money itself, but the poison of loving it. A man may manage a great fortune with a free heart, ready to lose everything without being torn apart; another, who owns almost nothing, may be eaten away by avarice over the little he has. The goal Francis de Sales proposes to all, rich and poor, is to be "rich in fact and poor in affection": the heart above goods, master and not slave.
The roots of avarice
One only fights a vice well by attacking its root. Yet avarice does not come from loving money for itself — no one loves metal coins — but from what money promises: security, power, independence. It is that hidden ground which must be named.
Distrust of Providence
The deepest root of avarice is a distrust: the muffled fear that God will not provide, that one must therefore foresee everything, keep everything, secure everything oneself. The miser is a man who does not truly believe that "your heavenly Father knows that you need them" (Mt 6:32). Where trust is lacking, money comes to fill the void: it becomes the stand-in god, the tangible security substituted for invisible Providence. That is why the deep remedy will not be an effort of tearing away, but growth in trust (see How to Grow in Abandonment to God).
Pride and the lust for power
Avarice is also knotted to pride. To possess is to dominate; to accumulate is to rise above others; to hoard is to make oneself independent of all. Money gives a power — over things, over people, over the future — and pride delights in it. That is why the fight against avarice joins the fight against pride: as long as the self wants to reign and be self-sufficient, possessions will remain a weapon it refuses to let go.
The inner emptiness one tries to fill
Finally, avarice is often an attempt to fill an emptiness: one accumulates because one fears lack, nothingness, death. Material goods come to fill a hunger that is not material, and which they can therefore never satisfy — hence the endless desire Qoheleth denounced. Saint Augustine described this displacement: the heart, made for God, finds its rest only in Him[13], and vainly seeks in creatures what only the Creator can give. Avarice is, in this sense, a hunger for God wrongly addressed. Healing it means redirecting the hunger toward its true object.
The daughters of avarice
A capital vice is recognized by the fact that it engenders other sins: it is called "capital" (from caput, the head) because it is a head from which a lineage descends. Saint Gregory the Great, in the Moralia in Job, drew up the list of the daughters of avarice, which Saint Thomas takes up in question 118:
"From avarice are born betrayal, fraud, deceit, perjuries, anxiety, acts of violence, and the hardening of the heart against mercy." — Saint Gregory the Great, Moralia in Job, XXXI, 45, quoted by Saint Thomas, Summa, II-II, q. 118, a. 8[14]
| Daughter of avarice | What it is | How it shows itself |
|---|---|---|
| Betrayal | Selling another for money | Judas handing over Christ for thirty pieces of silver |
| Fraud and deceit | Lying to acquire or keep | Falsified accounts, rigged contracts, hollow promises |
| Perjury | Swearing falsely for gain | Betraying one's word when money demands it |
| Anxiety | The permanent anguish of losing | Sleep gnawed by worry over goods |
| Violence | Taking by force what one covets | Injustice, oppression, exploitation of the weak |
| Hardening against mercy | The heart closed to the poor | No longer seeing the misery at one's door |
This offspring shows why avarice is so destructive of justice and charity. It never remains a private flaw: it pushes one to lie, betray, oppress, and above all it dries up mercy. The most terrible of its daughters is precisely the last: the hardening that blinds one to one's neighbor. By cutting off the head — the love of money — all the branches wither.
Avarice in Scripture: a gallery
Holy Scripture is a realistic treatise on avarice. It shows its ravages in a gallery of figures who are so many mirrors. Meditating on them means learning to recognize the vice at work — and to guard against it.
The rich fool: "this very night your life will be demanded of you"
To a man pressing Him to settle a question of inheritance, Jesus answers with a warning and a parable. The warning first: "Guard against all greed, for a man's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions" (Lk 12:15)[15]. Then the parable of the rich man whose lands have yielded too much, and who thinks only of building bigger barns to hoard it all:
"But God said to him: 'You fool, this very night your life will be demanded of you. And the things you have accumulated, whose will they be?' So it is with the one who lays up treasure for himself instead of becoming rich toward God." — Gospel according to Saint Luke 12:20–21[16]
Here avarice is called folly. Not because storing up would be absurd in itself, but because the miser hoards as if he would never die, forgetting the one certainty of existence. He is "rich toward himself" and "poor toward God": the exact portrait of the man who succeeded at everything and missed everything. Saint Basil comments on this parable in a famous homily, where he unmasks the miser's self-justification:
"What wrong do I do, you may say, by keeping what is mine? [...] The bread you lock away belongs to the hungry; the garment you keep in your chests belongs to the naked; the shoe that rots in your house belongs to the one who has none; the gold you bury belongs to the needy." — Saint Basil the Great, Homily "I Will Tear Down My Barns"[17]
For Basil, avarice rests on a lie: believing that accumulated goods are absolutely "mine," when they are entrusted to be shared. Surplus kept back is, in reality, goods stolen from the poor.
The rich young man: "he went away sorrowful"
A young man, devout, keeping the commandments, comes to ask Jesus the way to perfection. Jesus loves him and invites him to give everything to the poor and follow Him. The text's answer is one of the most poignant in the Gospel: "At these words, the young man went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions" (Mt 19:22)[18]. This man had stolen nothing, wronged no one; but his heart clung to his goods more than to God's call. It is avarice in its pure state: not crime, but the attachment that keeps one from following Christ. Jesus draws from it the saying about the camel and the eye of the needle — not that wealth damns, but that attachment to wealth makes entering the Kingdom "difficult" (Mt 19:23–24), impossible for man and possible for God alone.
The rich man and Lazarus: blindness of heart
The rich man of the Lazarus parable committed no glaring crime: he simply feasted every day without seeing the poor man lying at his gate (Lk 16:19–31)[19]. It is that blindness of heart which destroys him. Avarice here is not accumulation: it is the indifference which is its daughter, the hardening against mercy of which Saint Gregory spoke. The danger is not only holding back, but no longer seeing.
Judas, Gehazi, Ananias and Sapphira: avarice that betrays and lies
Three figures show the daughters of avarice in action. Judas, of whom the evangelist bluntly notes that "he was a thief" and kept the common purse (Jn 12:6)[20], hands over Christ for thirty pieces of silver: betrayal, the first daughter of avarice. Gehazi, Elisha's servant, runs after Naaman to secretly wheedle money and garments from him, then lies to his master; he comes away struck with leprosy (2 Kgs 5:20–27)[21]: fraud and lying punished. Ananias and Sapphira, in the first community of Jerusalem, hold back part of the price of a field while pretending to give everything, and fall dead for having "lied to the Holy Spirit" (Acts 5:1–11)[22]: perjury and deceit pushed to sacrilege. In all three cases, avarice does not remain interior: it arms the hand to betray, lie, and hold back.
Zacchaeus: avarice converted
The gallery does not end with a condemnation, but with a conversion. Zacchaeus, chief tax collector — rich, then, with often extorted money — welcomes Christ and proclaims in one stroke the overturning of his whole life: "Behold, Lord: I give half of my goods to the poor, and if I have wronged anyone, I will restore it fourfold" (Lk 19:8)[23]. Jesus then declares: "Today salvation has come to this house." Zacchaeus is living proof that avarice is not a fate: the remedy exists, and it has a name — giving. That is where we are heading.
How to grow in the fight against avarice
Here comes the heart of this article: the concrete means. Avarice is not uprooted by the mere resolve to "stop clinging to money" — that would be like pulling up a plant by its leaves. It is fought through a series of gestures, attitudes, and graces which together loosen the heart's grip. Here they are, from the most immediate to the deepest.
1. Name avarice and confess it
The first means is the hardest: recognizing avarice in oneself. For it disguises itself as virtue. A simple test: what costs me most to give? Which spending for others tightens my heart, while the same spending for myself seems natural? Am I afraid of lacking, when I lack nothing? If giving hurts, if generosity is always postponed, if the thought of losing obsesses, it is avarice, whatever clothes — "prudence," "realism," "responsibility" — it has put on.
Naming it makes it possible to confess it. Avarice is a sin against charity and justice; brought to the sacrament of confession, it receives the grace that dissolves it. Saying it aloud already breaks its power, for avarice is a sin of the shadows, which lives on not being named.
2. Practice almsgiving: unclenching the fingers one by one
The most concrete remedy, the most immediately effective, is almsgiving. One is not healed of attachment to money by interior resolutions, but by unclenching one's fingers one by one, through real gifts. Each alms loosens the grip; each gift proves to the heart that it can live without what it believed indispensable. The Catechism ranks almsgiving among the foremost witnesses of fraternal charity and a work of justice pleasing to God[24]. Scripture lends it an astonishing power of purification: "Almsgiving delivers from death and purges away all sin" (Tb 12:9)[25]. Not that money redeems, but that the gesture of giving concretely breaks avarice. It is the exercise par excellence, to be taken up unceasingly: see the poor, give before calculating, give even when it costs. On how to practice giving as a true work of conversion, see How to Grow in Almsgiving.
3. Acquire liberality: giving with joy
Beyond the gesture, the aim is to make the virtue grow: liberality, that Thomistic golden mean between avarice and prodigality. The liberal man does not give in fits and starts nor from remorse: he gives with joy, because he has understood that money is made to circulate, not to stagnate. Saint Paul sets the note: "God loves a cheerful giver" (2 Cor 9:7)[26]. Liberality is cultivated like every virtue: through repeated acts, until giving becomes second nature, and the hand opens of itself. It is the exact reverse of avarice: where the miser clenches, the liberal man breathes.
4. Trust in Providence: "be content with what you have"
Since the root of avarice is distrust, the deep battle passes through trust. The Letter to the Hebrews explicitly links the two:
"Let your conduct not be inspired by the love of money: be content with what you have, for God Himself has said: 'I will never leave you, I will never forsake you.'" — Letter to the Hebrews 13:5[27]
The remedy for avarice is not to have more, but to be content — and one is content only if one trusts. Saint Paul makes contentment a wealth greater than all:
"Certainly, there is great gain in religion if one is content with what one has. For we brought nothing into this world, and we can take nothing out of it. If we have food and clothing, let us be content with that." — First Letter to Timothy 6:6–8[28]
Cultivating trust means reminding oneself each day that life rests in God's hand, not in the bank account; that "seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you besides" (Mt 6:33) is not a slogan, but a promise. It is the proper work of abandonment to God.
5. Gratitude: everything is received
Avarice is short-sighted: it sees only what is lacking or what might be lost, never what has been given. Its antidote is gratitude, which turns the gaze back toward goods received. He who gives thanks recognizes that everything — life, health, work, this day's bread — is gift, not conquest. Yet one does not jealously hoard what one has received freely: one shares it in turn. Making each day the count of graces received starves avarice by filling the heart with another wealth (see How to Grow in Gratitude).
6. Detachment and poverty of heart
The battle aims finally at an interior freedom: poverty of heart, which the Beatitudes call blessed. The Catechism makes it the key to the Christian relationship to goods:
"Jesus enjoins his disciples to prefer him to everything and everyone, and bids them 'take leave of all their goods' for his sake and that of the Gospel. [...] The precept of detachment from riches is obligatory for entrance into the Kingdom of heaven. 'Blessed are the poor in spirit' (Mt 5:3)." — Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 2544 and 2546[29]
The Catechism adds that "abandonment to the Providence of the Father in heaven frees us from anxiety about tomorrow" (CCC § 2547)[30]. Detachment is not contempt for goods, but freedom toward them: holding them with an open hand, ready to give or lose them without being torn apart. It is the specific work of detachment and, at a more radical degree, of evangelical poverty.
7. Remembering death: we take nothing with us
An ancient, rough, and unfailing means is the remembrance of death. "We brought nothing into this world, and we can take nothing out of it" (1 Tm 6:7). The miser hoards as if he would never die; it suffices to face the one certain deadline for accumulation to appear in all its folly — the very folly of the rich fool. The shroud has no pockets. Meditating on one's death does not make one sad: it makes one free, for one ceases to serve what must in any case be left behind, in order to store up the only treasure that crosses death — the one that has been given away. "For where your treasure is, there also will your heart be" (Mt 6:21)[31].
8. Prayer and the sacraments
None of these means holds without grace, which is drawn from prayer and the sacraments. Mental prayer keeping the heart turned toward God, the Eucharist clearing the heart of its idols, confession purifying: these are the channels through which grace comes to dislodge avarice where willpower alone fails. One asks God each day for "our daily bread" — and not for the rich fool's barns: the prayer of the Our Father is already a school of dispossession, teaching one to ask only for what is necessary and to receive it as a gift.
9. Living in the Divine Will: possessing nothing as one's own, receiving everything
The last degree, the highest, is that of the Divine Will. It is no longer only a matter of doing God's will by obeying Him, but of living in His Will: God then gives His own Will to the soul so that it may live and act in it, as a single will for two. It is the path opened to the Servant of God Luisa Piccarreta in The Book of Heaven — private revelation, to be received with the discernment of the Church. The soul that lives in this "Fiat" — that word by which God creates — no longer has anything of its own to defend, for it receives all things as a gift from the Father and uses goods only as a trust confided to it. Where avarice partitions — "mine," "my own" — life in the Divine Will places everything back into God's hands: one no longer possesses for oneself, one administers for all. The very mainspring of avarice — fear of lacking, the need to hold back — is dissolved there, because the soul that lives in the divine Will knows it will never lack what is essential: God Himself, who gives Himself entirely. It is the perfect fulfillment of poverty of heart, already begun on earth.
The fruits of a heart freed from avarice
How does one tell that the battle bears fruit? By a visible transformation of the heart.
Freedom and peace
The first fruit is freedom. The miser was a slave: slave to his goods, to the fear of losing them, to perpetual calculation. The freed heart breathes. It possesses without being possessed; it can lose everything without collapsing, because its treasure is no longer where rust and thieves destroy (Mt 6:19–20). Peace succeeds anxiety: the peace of one who has placed his security in better hands than his own.
The joy of giving
The sweetest fruit is the joy of giving. As long as avarice reigned, giving was a tearing apart; once avarice is overcome, giving becomes a source of joy — the joy of one who knows himself rich enough to share. The heart has discovered the Gospel paradox: "There is more happiness in giving than in receiving" (Acts 20:35)[32]. One no longer gives to get rid of a remorse, but out of love, and one realizes that in giving one does not impoverish oneself: one expands.
True security, in God alone
Finally, the freed heart finds true security. Avarice promised security through having; it gave only anguish. The free heart finds it where it truly is: in God, "who will never let us go." In overcoming avarice, one loses nothing — except chains. One gains the freedom of the children of God, who receive everything from a Father, store up only in Heaven, and enter already on this earth into the peace of those who no longer serve two masters, but one.
For Further Reading
- How to Grow in Almsgiving — the practice of giving, the concrete and daily remedy for avarice.
- How to Grow in Detachment and How to Grow in Evangelical Poverty — the virtues of a free relationship to goods, of which avarice is the negation.
- How to Grow in Gratitude — gratitude heals the miser's gaze by making him count what he has received.
- How to Grow in Abandonment to God — trust in Providence, which removes avarice's root of distrust.
- What Does the Church Say About Money? — the overall teaching: money, a real but subordinate good, servant or idol.
- How to Grow in the Fight Against Pride — the root vice of the lust for power on which avarice feeds.
- against envy, against anger, against gluttony, against lust, and against acedia — the other battles against the capital sins.
- How to Grow in Regular Confession and How to Grow in Mental Prayer — the sources of grace in which avarice dissolves.
Notes and References
First Letter of Saint Paul to Timothy 6:10, official liturgical translation (AELF): "For the root of all evils is the love of money. Having become attached to it, some have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many torments." The Vulgate's Latin — "radix enim omnium malorum est cupiditas" — made this verse the classic sentence on avarice. Saint Paul targets "the love of money" (philargyria), not money itself.
1 4Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 2536: "The tenth commandment forbids greed and the desire for an immoderate appropriation of earthly goods; it forbids unbridled covetousness arising from the immoderate passion for riches and their power. It also forbids the desire to commit an injustice by which one would harm one's neighbor in his temporal goods." § 2534 opens the treatment of the tenth commandment and § 2535 distinguishes legitimate sensible covetousness from its unregulated overflow. Official French edition, Mame/Plon, 1992.
2Gospel according to Saint Matthew 6:24, official liturgical translation (AELF): "No one can serve two masters: either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money." "Money" here translates the Aramaic Mamon (Mammon), wealth personified as a false divinity. Parallel in Lk 16:13. CCC § 2113 quotes this verse when treating idolatry under the first commandment.
3 8Qoheleth (Ecclesiastes) 5:9, official liturgical translation (AELF): "He who loves money never has enough money, and he who loves abundance reaps nothing: this too is mere vanity." The classic observation on the insatiable character of the miser's desire.
5Sirach (Ben Sira the Wise) 31:5–8, official liturgical translation (AELF): "He who loves gold cannot remain just, he who chases after gain lets himself be led astray. Many have fallen for having loved gold; their ruin was inevitable. Gold is a trap for those who make an idol of it; the fool will be caught in it. Happy the rich man found blameless who has not chased after gold." Ben Sira links love of gold to sin, but reserves a beatitude for the rich man who remained just (v. 8).
6Letter to the Colossians 3:5, official liturgical translation (AELF): Saint Paul lists among the vices to be put to death "this greed for possession, which is idolatry." Avarice is there explicitly called idolatry, for it puts a creature in God's place.
7Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274), Summa Theologica, II-II, q. 118, a. 1: avarice (avaritia) is "an immoderate love of possessing" (immoderatus amor habendi). Thomas distinguishes two senses: (1) the disorder toward one's neighbor, when one acquires or keeps goods against justice; (2) the interior disorder, the inordinate affection for riches. In this second sense, avarice is directly opposed to liberality.
9Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II-II, q. 118, a. 7 (avarice is a capital vice) and a. 4 (it can be mortal or venial sin). It is mortal when love of riches prevails over love of God or leads one to gravely harm one's neighbor; it remains venial when attachment exceeds measure without going so far as to prefer having to charity. Thomas also notes (a. 5) that avarice, regarding exterior goods, is of itself less grave than sins directly against God.
10Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II-II, q. 117 (liberality), q. 118 (avarice), and q. 119 (prodigality). Liberality is the virtue of the right relationship to riches, holding the middle between avarice (deficiency: holding back) and prodigality (excess: squandering). An Aristotelian framework (Nicomachean Ethics, IV) taken up and Christianized.
11Saint Francis de Sales (1567–1622), Introduction to the Devout Life (1609), part III, ch. 14, "On poverty of spirit observed amid riches": "There is a difference between having poison and being poisoned. Apothecaries almost all keep poisons to use them on various occasions, but for all that they are not poisoned, because they do not have the poison in their body, but in their shop; so you may have riches without being poisoned by them, provided you keep them in your house or in your purse, and not in your heart." Francis de Sales proposes to all the ideal of being "rich in fact and poor in affection."
12Saint Augustine (354–430), Confessions, book I, chapter 1: "for you have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you" (Fecisti nos ad te, et inquietum est cor nostrum donec requiescat in te). The heart, made for God, finds its rest only in Him.
13Saint Gregory the Great (c. 540–604), Moralia in Job (Morals on Job), book XXXI, ch. 45, quoted by Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II-II, q. 118, a. 8, which lists the seven daughters of avarice: "betrayal (proditio), fraud (fraus), deceit (fallacia), perjuries (periuria), anxiety (inquietudo), acts of violence (violentiae), and the hardening of the heart against mercy (contra misericordiam obduratio cordis)." These seven offspring explain why avarice is ranked among the capital sins.
14Gospel according to Saint Luke 12:15, official liturgical translation (AELF): "Then he said to them: 'Guard against all greed, for a man's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.'" Preface to the parable of the rich fool (Lk 12:16–21).
15Gospel according to Saint Luke 12:16–21, official liturgical translation (AELF), parable of the rich fool. To the man who wants to build bigger barns, God says: "You fool: this very night your life will be demanded of you. And the things you have accumulated, whose will they be?" Conclusion (v. 21): "So it is with the one who lays up treasure for himself instead of becoming rich toward God."
16Saint Basil of Caesarea (c. 329–379), Homily on the words of the Gospel: "I Will Tear Down My Barns and Build Greater Ones"; and against avarice (Greek text: Patrologia Graeca 31). Passage quoted in the French translation by Abbé Auger, Homélies, discours et lettres choisis de S. Basile-le-Grand, Lyon, Guyot, 1827 (online on remacle.org). On Basil's social doctrine, see S. Giet, Les idées et l'action sociale de saint Basile, Paris, 1941.
17Gospel according to Saint Matthew 19:16–26, official liturgical translation (AELF): to the rich young man who keeps the commandments, Jesus proposes: "If you wish to be perfect, go, sell what you have, give it to the poor [...] then come, follow me." — "At these words the young man went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions" (v. 22). Then comes the saying about the camel and the eye of the needle (v. 24) and: "For men this is impossible, but for God all things are possible" (v. 26). Parallels: Mk 10:17–27; Lk 18:18–27.
18Gospel according to Saint Luke 16:19–31, official liturgical translation (AELF), parable of the rich man and poor Lazarus. The rich man is accused of no crime, but of having feasted every day without seeing Lazarus lying at his gate. Blindness of heart — daughter of avarice (hardening against mercy) — leads him to torment.
19Gospel according to Saint John 12:6, official liturgical translation (AELF): regarding Judas protesting the "wasted" perfume, the evangelist notes: "He said this not out of concern for the poor, but because he was a thief: holding the common purse, he used to take what was put into it." Judas's avarice culminates in betrayal for thirty pieces of silver (Mt 26:14–16) — the first daughter of avarice.
20Second Book of Kings 5:20–27, official liturgical translation (AELF): Gehazi, Elisha's servant, runs after the healed Naaman the Syrian to secretly wheedle money and garments from him, then lies to his master. Elisha announces that Naaman's leprosy will cling to him and his descendants. Punishment of the fraud and lying born of avarice.
21Acts of the Apostles 5:1–11, official liturgical translation (AELF): Ananias and his wife Sapphira sell a field, hold back part of it while pretending to lay everything at the Apostles' feet, and fall dead one after the other. Peter reproaches them with having lied to the Holy Spirit (v. 3): "You have lied not to men, but to God" (v. 4). Deceit and perjury pushed to sacrilege.
22Gospel according to Saint Luke 19:1–10, official liturgical translation (AELF): Zacchaeus, chief tax collector and rich man, welcomes Jesus and declares: "Behold, Lord: I give half of my goods to the poor, and if I have wronged anyone, I will restore it fourfold." Jesus answers: "Today salvation has come to this house [...] for the Son of Man came to seek and save what was lost." The finished figure of avarice converted by giving.
23Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 2447: "The works of mercy are charitable actions by which we come to the aid of our neighbor in his spiritual and bodily necessities. [...] Among these gestures, almsgiving to the poor [...] is one of the chief witnesses to fraternal charity: it is also a practice of justice that pleases God." The CCC thus makes almsgiving a work of justice pleasing to God, and not a merely optional generosity.
24Book of Tobit 12:8–9, official liturgical translation (AELF): "It is better to pray with truthfulness and to give alms with righteousness, than to be rich with injustice. It is better to give alms than to store up gold. Almsgiving delivers from death and purges away all sin." Almsgiving receives there a purifying power — not that money redeems, but that giving concretely breaks attachment to goods.
25Second Letter to the Corinthians 9:7, official liturgical translation (AELF): "Each one should give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver." Christian liberality is recognized by the joy of giving, opposed to the miser's clenching.
26Letter to the Hebrews 13:5, official liturgical translation (AELF): "Let your conduct not be inspired by the love of money: be content with what you have, for God Himself has said: 'I will never leave you, I will never forsake you.'" The remedy for avarice is contentment, itself founded on God's faithfulness (quoting Dt 31:6).
27First Letter to Timothy 6:6–8, official liturgical translation (AELF): "Certainly, there is great gain in religion if one is content with what one has. For we brought nothing into this world, and we can take nothing out of it. If we have food and clothing, let us be content with that." Contentment is presented as the true wealth, opposed to the desire to grow rich (vv. 9–10).
28Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 2544: "Jesus enjoins his disciples to prefer him to everything and everyone, and bids them 'take leave of all their goods' (Lk 14:33) for his sake and that of the Gospel. [...] The precept of detachment from riches is obligatory for entrance into the Kingdom of heaven." The beatitude "Blessed are the poor in spirit" (Mt 5:3) is quoted in § 2546. § 2545 adds that all the faithful must govern their affections so as not to be hindered, by the use of goods, from attaining perfect charity.
29Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 2547: "The Lord laments over the rich, because they find their consolation in the abundance of goods (Lk 6:24). [...] Abandonment to the Providence of the Father in heaven frees us from anxiety about tomorrow (cf. Mt 6:25–34). Trust in God disposes us to the beatitude of the poor. They shall see God." Poverty of heart is there linked to the trust that heals anxiety, the root of avarice.
30Gospel according to Saint Matthew 6:19–21, official liturgical translation (AELF): "Do not lay up treasures on earth, where moth and worm destroy them [...]. But lay up treasures in heaven [...]. For where your treasure is, there also will your heart be." The place of the treasure decides the place of the heart: it is the criterion of the fight against avarice.
31Acts of the Apostles 20:35, official liturgical translation (AELF): Saint Paul, at Miletus, reports a saying of the Lord not recorded in the gospels: "There is more happiness in giving than in receiving." The sentence that sums up the fruit of the fight against avarice: the joy of giving.
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