What the Saints Say About Fighting Envy

"It was by the jealousy of the devil": the supernatural root of envy

Before being a human fault, envy is, for Scripture, a supernatural drama. The book of Wisdom makes it the very explanation of death: it was not God who willed death, but the envy of another, the spirit jealous of the happiness of man created in the image of God.

"God created man for incorruption, making him in the image of his own identity. It was by the jealousy of the devil that death entered the world; those who belong to him experience it."
— Book of Wisdom 2:23-24^[2]

The entire Christian view of envy arises from this verse. Envy is not primarily about wealth or reputation: it is a movement of the spirit that cannot bear that another be fulfilled. Satan, tradition says, could not bear that the creature made of clay was called to the glory from which he himself had fallen. Envy is thus the most diabolical of vices: not because it is the most widespread, but because it directly imitates the demon, who gains no profit from man’s loss except the dark satisfaction of seeing him fallen.

What is envy? Saint Thomas Aquinas’s definition

Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) gathered this entire tradition in question 36 of the Secunda Secundae, entirely devoted to envy (De invidia). His brief definition has become authoritative: envy is a sadness, and more precisely a sadness before another’s good perceived as a diminution of oneself.

"Envy, properly speaking, is sadness caused by another’s good. But this good of another can only become an object of sadness insofar as it is considered to diminish our own good or our own glory."
— according to Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II-II, q. 36, a. 1^[3]

The key word is sadness. Here lies the whole paradox noted by the saints: envy is the only capital sin that offers no sweetness. The glutton enjoys his meal, the avaricious his gold, the proud his glory; the envious enjoys nothing — he suffers from the happiness of others and deprives himself of his own.

Distinguishing envy, jealousy, and holy emulation

Spiritual masters insist on a distinction that everyday language has blurred. Not all jealousy is envy, and there even exists a holy emulation.

Saint Thomas specifies that envy always presupposes that another’s good is perceived as a harm to oneself: this is what distinguishes it from zeal, which desires good without sadness at seeing it in another^[4]. The envious person does not only want to rise: he wants the other to fall.

Why envy is a sin against charity

Saint Thomas ranks envy among sins directly opposed to charity. Charity makes the good of another our good; envy makes it our harm. It is therefore the exact reversal of brotherly love.

“Envy, by its nature, is a mortal sin. For the nature of envy consists in being saddened by the good of another, and this is contrary to charity, by which we rejoice in the good of our neighbor. Therefore, envy opposes charity.”
— according to Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II-II, q. 36, a. 3^[5]

Thomas immediately nuances this with his usual rigor: not every movement of envy is immediately a completed mortal sin. It can remain at the stage of the first movement, almost involuntary, or a venial sin when reason does not fully consent^[6]. But envy “by its nature” — fully willed, savored — is grave because it attacks what is most precious: the bond of charity that unites the Body of Christ.

The first major Christian treatise entirely devoted to envy is the work of a martyred bishop: Saint Cyprian of Carthage (c. 200–258). Around 252, in the midst of the trial of the Church of Africa torn by divisions, he wrote De zelo et livore — “On Jealousy and Envy” — to show that beneath schisms and grudges always simmers the same venom^[7]. For Cyprian, envy is not just one sin among others: it is the source from which all others spring.

Envy Is the Root of All Evils, According to Saint Cyprian

Saint Cyprian describes envy as the root from which all evils spring: a source of calamities, a nursery of crimes, giving birth to hatred and animosity — and it is envy that inflames greed, when one can no longer be content with what one has upon seeing another richer.

— after Saint Cyprian of Carthage, On Jealousy and Envy^[8]

Cyprian describes envy as an internal evil, which needs no weapon or circumstance to do harm: it is enough that another is happy. It is a sin without measure or end, because the reasons to be saddened by another’s happiness are countless — there will always be someone richer, more praised, more loved.

The Devil, the First Envious One, and the Fall of Man

Cyprian traces, like Wisdom, the supernatural origin of evil. The devil, fallen from his glory, could not bear that man was called to the place he had lost: it was through envy that he seduced him, and through envy that he lost him.

Cyprian writes that the demon, before causing man to perish, himself perished through envy: himself first lost, he lost man with him.

— after Saint Cyprian of Carthage, On Jealousy and Envy^[9]

This insight, shared by the entire tradition, gives envy its gravity: the envious one “imitates the devil.” When he rejoices in another’s misfortune or is saddened by his happiness, he repeats, on a small scale, the act that lost Lucifer and opened the door to death.

Cain, the First Disciple of Envy

Envy has a first name in the history of mankind: Cain. Cyprian sees in this proof that envy, from the very beginning, leads to murder.

From the very beginnings of the world, writes Cyprian, Cain was the first to hate his brother Abel: jealous and envious, the wicked could not endure the just.

— after Saint Cyprian of Carthage, On Jealousy and Envy^[10]

The Genesis account is indeed the first treatise on envy. God accepts Abel’s offering but not Cain’s; and instead of correcting himself, Cain sinks into the sadness of seeing his brother preferred. God himself warns him, in a text that the Fathers have meditated on as the first clinical description of envy:

“Why are you angry, and why has your face fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do well, sin lies at the door; its desire is for you, but you must rule over it.”
— Book of Genesis 4:6-7 (God to Cain)^[11]

Envy is this “sin lying at the door”: it is but a thread away from jealous sadness turning into hatred, and hatred into murder. Cain did not master the beast; he killed.

Joseph Sold by His Brothers: The Envy That Sought to Kill the Dreams

After Cain, Cyprian names a second face of envy: Joseph, sold by his own brothers. The cause of the sale, he says, was nothing other than the envy born of his dreams, recounted in all candor.

“And if his brothers sold Joseph, it was from jealous rivalry that this sale came: after he had set before them, in all simplicity, as a brother to his brothers, the prosperity shown to him in visions, their malevolent heart burst forth into envy.”
— Saint Cyprian of Carthage, On Jealousy and Envy, ch. 5 (translated from the Latin)^[12]

The Genesis account is indeed just that: the tunic offered by Jacob, the dreams recounted without guile, then the hatred of the brothers (Gen 37:3-4) until the sale to the Ishmaelites (Gen 37:28). Saint Basil draws the same lesson from it — what reduced Joseph to servitude, if not the envy of his brothers?^[13] — and he admires how Providence turned the weapon against itself, since it was through this sale that Joseph became the savior of his brothers.

Envy First Devours the Envious, Turned Into His Own Enemy

Cyprian finally describes the inner torment of the envious. The venom he intends for others first turns against himself: he is gnawed, dried up, tortured by the very happiness of those he pursues.

Cyprian calls envy a worm gnawing at the soul, a plague of the mind, a rust of the heart: to envy the virtue or happiness of another is to devour oneself — and the envious, he concludes, has no worse enemy than himself.

— after Saint Cyprian of Carthage, On Jealousy and Envy^[14]

This is one of the great insights of the tradition: envy is a punishment unto itself. Where lust or greed at least promise some pleasure, envy gives only the torment of seeing another happy. You have no crueler enemy than yourself, spirituality would say after Cyprian.

At the same time, in the East, Saint Basil of Caesarea (c. 330–379), Father of the Church and great shepherd of Cappadocia, devoted an entire homily to envy (Peri phthonou). It is the most penetrating psychological analysis that Christian antiquity has left on this vice. Basil begins with the same definition that Thomas Aquinas would later adopt, then unfolds the entire mechanism.

According to Saint Basil of Caesarea, envy is a pain conceived at the prosperity of another: thus the envious person is never free from pain and sadness — whether the neighbor’s field be fertile, his house full of goods, his life sweet and comfortable, all these advantages distress him and feed his sickness^[15].

The most pernicious of passions

According to Saint Basil of Caesarea, there is no passion more pernicious than envy: it harms those it attacks less than the one who experiences it, for it feeds on good and not on evil, and the envious finds in it as it were a domestic executioner^[16].

The Torment of the Envious: Envy First Devours the Envious

Then comes the image that has endured through the centuries, one of the most accurate in all spiritual literature: according to Saint Basil of Caesarea, envy undermines and consumes those it seizes as rust consumes iron — an evil that does not come from outside, but arises from the thing itself and consumes it from within^[17].

Basil paints the envious down to his body: the face that falls apart at the recounting of others’ successes. It is the portrait of a man for whom the happiness of others has become a permanent wound — a being whom nothing can make happy, since happiness always exists somewhere else.

The demon, Cain, and Saul: envy at work

Like Cyprian, Basil reads sacred history in the light of envy, whose first author and earliest disciples he identifies: it was envy that drove the demon to declare war on man, and Cain, the demon’s first disciple, learned envy and murder from it^[18].

He adds the example of King Saul, who loved David as long as he was useful to him, but pursued him with a spear as soon as he heard the women sing that Saul had slain his thousands and David his tens of thousands (1 Sam 18:7)^[19]. Praise given to another is enough to turn a benefactor into a murderer. Envy, as Basil shows with Saul, rewards benefits with hatred.

If envy is so formidable, it is because it never remains alone. Saint Thomas, following Saint Gregory the Great, classifies envy among the capital vices — that is, vices that give rise to a whole lineage of sins. He describes its progression with an almost clinical precision: from the secret of the soul to the act that destroys one’s neighbor.

“From envy arise hatred, murmuring, detraction, joy in the adversity of one’s neighbor, and sorrow at his prosperity.”
— according to Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II-II, q. 36, a. 4^[20]

Thomas explains the order of this genealogy: first, the envious person seeks to lower the reputation of another, secretly by murmuring, openly by detraction; then, if successful, he rejoices, and if he fails, he is distressed; finally, all this culminates in hatred, because “one ends up hating the one whose good continually grieves us.”^[21]

Note: envy almost never breaks out openly. It begins with a whisper, hides under the guise of frankness (“I say this for their own good”), and is only recognized by its fruits — satisfaction at another’s failure and bitterness at their success.

Saint Gregory the Great: Envy in the Service of the "Queen of Vices"

Saint Gregory the Great (c. 540–604), in his Morals on Job, established for the entire Middle Ages the list of the seven capital sins: seven principal vices engendered directly by pride, superb pride the “queen of vices” — vainglory, envy, anger, sadness, avarice, gluttony, and lust^[22]. Envy is therefore not the daughter of vainglory, but its sister: it holds second place there, just after vainglory, in the army that pride sends to ravage the heart.

The order is enlightening: one envies only because one first loves oneself in a disordered way. Pride desires excellence; envy arises as soon as another seems to contest it. This is why any serious fight against envy must pass through the fight against pride, which is discussed in What the Saints Say About the Fight Against Pride. Saint Augustine put it succinctly: it is “the love of self to the contempt of God” that builds the city of division^[23].

Comparison, the Daily Root of Envy

Masters of the interior life have shown that envy does not come so much from what we lack as from what we compare. As long as I look to God and the gifts I have received, I give thanks; as soon as I compare myself to my neighbor, I find myself wronged. Thomas à Kempis highlights this shift of perspective:

“The humble man enjoys unshakable peace; anger and envy trouble the heart of the proud.”
— Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, Book I, ch. 7^[24]

Peace here is not a matter of circumstances but of perspective. The humble, who does not compare, remains at peace amid the successes of others; the envious, always measured against someone greater, never knows rest. This is exactly what Saint Paul exhorts us to avoid: “Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another” (Gal 5:26)^[25].

Envy at the Foot of the Cross

The Gospel places envy at its summit, where it was least expected: it is not greed or cruelty, but the jealousy of the religious leaders that hands Jesus over. Saint Mark and Saint Matthew explicitly note this, and even Pilate is not deceived.

“For he knew that it was out of envy that they had handed him over.”
— Gospel according to Saint Matthew 27:18 (cf. Mk 15:10)^[26]

Tradition has seen here the supreme revelation of the vice: envy cannot bear the light and ends up wanting to kill the good itself. “They hated me without cause” (Jn 15:25): envy is this baseless hatred that resents the just for their very justice. This is why the saints feared it so much—not as a petty fault, but as the passion that led even to deicide.

Against such a deep vice, the saints do not oppose a mere act of willpower to “stop envying”—that would still be self-focused. They oppose a turning of the heart: moving from comparison to charity, from possession to gratitude. Each trigger of envy corresponds to a precise weapon.

Charity: Rejoicing in the Good of Others

The first and supreme weapon is charity, because it does exactly the opposite of envy: it rejoices in the good of one’s neighbor as in one’s own. Saint Paul said it in the most famous hymn of the New Testament.

“Love is patient; love is kind; love does not envy; it does not boast, it is not proud.”
— First Letter to the Corinthians 13:4^[27]

Charity heals envy at its root: it expands the heart until the good of others becomes personal joy. This is the program Paul gives elsewhere in one phrase: “Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep” (Rom 12:15)^[28]. As long as one sincerely rejoices in another’s happiness, envy has no hold: it lives only on sadness.

Humility and Gratitude: “What Do You Have That You Did Not Receive?”

Envy assumes that one believes oneself deserving of what another has. Humility disarms it by reminding us that everything is received: no one has anything that has not been given, and one cannot envy a gift without blaming the Giver.

“What do you have that you did not receive? And if you did receive it, why do you boast as if you had not?”
— First Letter to the Corinthians 4:7^[29]

Saint Basil himself indicated this remedy: to raise one’s thoughts above human things to understand that none of the perishable goods—wealth, beauty, glory—truly makes one happy, and so there is nothing worth gnawing one’s soul over^[30]. Gratitude is the daily antidote: he who gives thanks for what he has received ceases to measure what he lacks. This whole path is found in What the Saints Say About Gratitude and What the Saints Say About Detachment.

Thérèse of Lisieux: The Lesson of the Flowers

No saint disarmed envy better than Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus (1873–1897). As a child, she was saddened by not being the greatest; she then received an image that transformed her entire spiritual life—the garden, where each flower delights God without envying the others.

“Jesus deigned to instruct me in this mystery. He placed before my eyes the book of nature, and I understood that all the flowers created by him are beautiful, that the brightness of the rose and the whiteness of the lily do not take away the fragrance of the little violet, nor anything from the ravishing simplicity of the daisy. I understood that, if all the little flowers wanted to be roses, nature would lose its springtime adornment, the fields would no longer be enamelled with little blossoms. So it is in the world of souls, the living garden of the Lord. He found it good to create great saints who may be compared to lilies and roses; but he created smaller ones too, who must be content to be daisies or simple violets destined to delight his divine gaze when he lowers it to his feet. The happier the flowers are to do his will, the more perfect they are.”
— Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus, Story of a Soul, manuscript A, ff. 2v-3r^[31]

Here lies the deepest remedy: envy dies when one ceases to want to be another, and joyfully accepts to be this flower, willed and loved as such. The little violet does not envy the lily; it rejoices that God’s garden is more beautiful for the presence of the lily. This is charity made simple—and it is the complete victory over envy.

In the end, the voice of the saints on envy says one constant thing: this vice is all the more dangerous because it hides itself. No one admits to being envious; we tell ourselves we are clear-sighted, we speak “out of concern for the truth,” we rejoice “for good reasons” at a failure that relieves us. Envy is the sin that never names itself — and that is why the first battle is to recognize it, in that little pang at the story of a success that is not ours, in that troubled satisfaction at the fall of a rival.

But this clarity is not despair: it is the threshold of healing. For the remedy is within reach, and it is joyful. It is not a matter of forcibly tearing envy away — that would still be self-focused — but of looking elsewhere: to God, from whom all is received; to our neighbor, whose good can become my joy. “Love does not envy”: everything is there. Where envy withers, charity expands; where envy isolates, it unites. The saint is not one who has never felt the sting of envy, but one who, having felt it, has chosen to rejoice anyway — and who, little by little, has made the happiness of others his own happiness. This is the shortest path out of the prison of self: no longer to envy, but to bless.

• What the Saints Say About the Battle Against Pride — the root of envy: we envy only because we first love ourselves in a disordered way.
• What the Saints Say About Gratitude — the daily antidote: giving thanks for what we have received instead of measuring what is lacking.
• What the Saints Say About Detachment — detaching from perishable goods that feed comparison and envy.
• What the Saints Say About Justice — giving each their due and rejoicing in the common good, against murmuring and detraction.
• What the Saints Say About the Battle Against Anger — the sister of envy, often its outward overflow.
• What the Saints Say About the Battle Against Avarice — another vice of possession, where comparison inflames greed (Saint Cyprian).