On Avarice
-St. Basil the Great
When I enter the house of an unjust man and see it gleaming with various adornments, I conclude that the master of the house has acquired nothing more honorable than what is visible, adorning lifeless things while his soul remains unadorned. Though a multitude of the poor stand at his door, each raising a piteous cry, he refuses to give alms, claiming he cannot satisfy their needs. With his tongue, he swears he is unable; yet his hand betrays him, for silently it proclaims his falsehood, glittering with a precious ring. O wretched and poor man! How many could that one ring of yours free from debt? How many fallen houses could it restore? A single chest of your garments could clothe an entire people perishing from the cold. Yet you harden your heart: you send the poor away empty-handed, fearing not the righteous judgment of the Judge. You have shown no mercy, and you shall receive none; you have not opened your house, and you shall be cast out from the kingdom; you have not given bread, and you shall not receive eternal life. But you call yourself poor, and I grant it: poor is he who desires much, for the insatiability of life’s desires compels him to crave more. To ten talents, you strive to add another ten; and when you have twenty, you seek yet another twenty. What is added never halts your pursuit but inflames your desire. Just as for drunkards the cause of intoxication is more wine, so too the newly rich, having gained much, desire more, feeding their weakness through increase, which turns their effort against them. For the present blessings they possess in abundance bring them no joy, while the lack of what they imagine themselves deprived of causes them grief. When they should rejoice and give thanks for surpassing so many, they instead resent and mourn that this or that foremost rich man is wealthier. They give no thanks to the generous Benefactor for what they have, comparing themselves to those beneath them; but measuring themselves against greater wealth, they lament and grieve over what they deem lacking in their possessions, as if they had lost their own. Those who exceed the bounds of need are like those carried along a rushing path, finding nothing solid to stand upon, unable to stop and ceaselessly driven onward; the more they gain, the more they seek to satisfy their desire. As Solon, the son of Execestides, said: “No end to wealth is there for mortals.” At this moment, the words of the teacher Theognis are fitting: “Wealth I do not love, nor do I desire it; but to have enough to live, I do not condemn.”
I marvel at Diogenes’ contempt for all human things, who called himself richer than the great king, for he required less in life than the king did. Unless we receive the gifts of Pythias of Mysia—acres of land and countless herds—nothing satisfies us. Like those climbing a ladder, always moving their feet to the next rung until they reach the top, so too these, when they equal one rich man, immediately strive to match another wealthier still; and when they achieve this, they turn their desire to yet another, never ceasing their fierce pursuit until, having risen high, they fall to ruin from their lofty height.
Those possessed by madness do not see things as they are but imagine them in a dream; so too the soul of the avaricious, consumed by the love of gain, always sees gold, always silver, gazing more eagerly at gold than at the sun. He wishes all things could turn to gold and ponders this as much as he can. What schemes does he not employ for gold? Wheat becomes gold to him, wine transforms into gold, wool turns into gold, all trade and every endeavor bring him gold. Gold itself, lent out, multiplies manifold: there is no satiety, no end to desire. To indulgent children, we sometimes allow excessive satisfaction of their desires to breed aversion through overindulgence. But not so with the avaricious: the more wealth he abounds in, the more he craves. A kindled fire relentlessly consumes all material, and none can restrain it before all is consumed. Can anyone restrain the avaricious? He is fiercer than fire, ceaselessly devouring all. Has he seized his neighbor’s property? Another neighbor takes its place, and he appropriates that as well. He does not look at what he has gained, for it is much, but considers what he lacks. He does not rejoice in what he has acquired but grieves over what he does not have; he does not think of enjoying what he has gathered but torments himself with desire for more. Hence come sleeplessness, care, and anxiety. “What shall I do? I will pull down my barns, and build greater” (Lk. 12:18). Fool, “this night thy soul shall be required of thee: then whose shall those things be, which thou hast provided?” (Lk. 12:20). This mockery of folly is better than eternal torment. For what does he who is soon to be taken away plan? “I will pull down my barns.” Well planned, I would say to him: the storehouses of unrighteousness deserve destruction. Tear them down with your own hands, those you wickedly built. Destroy the barns from which none depart with comfort. Ruin the house that preserves avarice, break open the roofs, tear down the walls, show the sun the moldering grain, bring forth the wealth from its prison as you would a captive, lead out into the open the dark abodes of mammon. “I will pull down my barns, and build greater.” And when you fill those, what will you devise? Will you tear them down again and rebuild? What is more senseless than to endlessly toil, building with care and destroying with care?
When you hear, “Sell that thou hast, and give to the poor” (Mt. 19:21), that you may have treasure for the journey to eternal blessedness, you depart sorrowing; but when told to give your wealth to shameless women, to stonecutters, carpenters, arrangers of tiny stones, or painters, you rejoice as if acquiring something more honorable than your possessions. Do you not see these walls, crumbled by time, whose remnants stand like tombs throughout the city? When they were raised, how many poor were in the city, neglected by the rich of that time in their concern for building? Where now is the splendid preparation for their construction? Where is he who fussed over their magnificence? Have they not fallen, like structures built by playful children upon the sand? Does not that vain man lie in hell, repenting his vain care? Have a great soul, O man! Both small and great walls serve the same need. If you wish, the houses of the poor are your barns. “Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven” (Mt. 6:20), where neither moth consumes, nor rust corrupts, nor thieves steal. But you say, I will give to the needy when I fill my second barns. You have assigned yourself long years of life. Beware, lest the appointed day overtake you, for your promise is not proof of goodness but of vileness. You promise not to give but to refuse giving now. For what prevents you from giving now? Are there no poor? Are your barns not full? Is the reward not ready? Is the commandment not clear? The hungry faint from famine, the naked perish from cold, the debtor is oppressed, yet you defer charity until tomorrow. Hear Solomon, clearly crying, “Say not thou, Go thy way, and come again, and tomorrow I will give; for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth” (Prov. 3:28). You give gold to buy a horse without sorrow, but when spending the perishable to gain the kingdom of heaven, you weep and refuse the beggar, deferring charity and devising countless excuses for your expenditures. What will you answer the Judge, you who adorn walls but do not clothe a man, who decorate horses but despise your brother in tattered garments, who let wheat rot but do not feed the hungry, who bury silver but neglect the oppressed?
How shall I depict the sufferings of the poor? Looking within his house, he sees no gold, nor ever will; his vessels and garments are such as the poor possess, worth little more than a few copper coins. What then? He turns his gaze to his children, that he might bring them to the market and, selling them, escape death. Consider here the unbearable conflict between famine’s cruelty and a father’s love. Famine threatens a piteous death, yet nature pulls him back, urging him to die with his children. Repeatedly rushing forward, then holding back, he is at last overcome by necessity and need. What does the father plan? Which shall I sell first? Which will the merchant look upon more favorably? Shall I approach the eldest? But I honor his seniority. The youngest? But I pity his age, which knows not misfortune. This one bears his parents’ features; that one is apt for learning. O perplexity! What shall I begin? Which of these shall I seize? Into what beast shall I transform? How shall I forget nature? If I keep them all, I shall see them all wasted by famine. If I give one away, how shall I look upon the others, now suspect to them of betrayal? How shall I live in a house, having made myself childless? How shall I come to the table, having gained sustenance from this? At last, with boundless tears, he goes to sell his dearest son. Yet you are unmoved by such suffering, heedless of nature. Famine oppresses the poor, yet you delay and mock, multiplying his miseries. He sells his children for the price of food, while your hand, far from faltering at such calamities, haggles at the scales for more, as if by taking much you might give less, burdening the poor with woes from every side.
The Creator made the Seleucid bird insatiable for human kindness; but you have made your soul insatiable for the harm of many. One fish devours another, the smaller serving as food for the larger. Sometimes, a fish that overcomes a smaller one becomes prey to a larger still, and both are consumed in the belly of a third. Is this not what we humans do when we oppress those beneath us? How does he who, in boundless desire for wealth, hides the poor in the insatiable depths of avarice differ from that last fish? He seized the poor man’s property, and you, exposing him, added it to your own gain. You have shown yourself the most unjust of the unjust, the most usurious of usurers. Beware, lest the same fate as that fish overtakes you—hook, net, or snare. Surely, when we commit many injustices, we shall not escape final punishment. Did your father leave you wealth unjustly acquired? Restore it to the wronged, do not claim it, for it is an inheritance of sin. Do you hold someone forcibly enslaved after your father? Grant him freedom, to ease his suffering and gain your own. Make no excuses through your children, usurer. Are they your children? Gather for them eternal treasure: leave them a good memory rather than great wealth, make all men their fathers through beneficence. You must one day depart this life, leaving your son in youth, needing guardians. If you are good and charitable, everyone will nurture your child as their own, remembering that you were a father to orphans. But if you live wickedly, grieve many, and are fiercer than any beast to those around you, when you depart from life, you will leave your son a common enemy to all. For as one fears a scorpion’s offspring, lest it grow to resemble its parent, so too your children, as heirs of their father’s wickedness, will be persecuted by all before they reach maturity. Like rivers rushing from their source, carrying all in their path with fierce force, so too the avaricious, strengthened by those they have wronged, gain greater power to oppress and enslave others. From greater strength comes greater wickedness, as each victim cares more to avoid further harm than to seek vengeance for what they have suffered.
Therefore, do not covet your neighbor’s field; do not increase your own by adding furrow to furrow. For as much as you expand your land by unjust gain, you heap upon yourself a greater sin. The land you gradually enlarge through usury remains here, no longer yours but your heirs’, and you leave unjust wealth to those who would inherit from you. The earth endures forever, but sin, like a shadow, follows every soul; for as a shadow follows the body, so sin entwines with the soul. Those who unjustly extend the boundaries of their possessions onto others’, since these holdings are gained through the sighs of the oppressed, surely become estranged from God’s blessing, so that where ten yoke of oxen plowed, scarcely a single jar can be gathered, and where six artabas were sown, barely three measures of fruit can be reaped (Is. 5:10). The usurer is an evil citizen in the city, an evil neighbor in the villages. The sea knows its bounds, the night does not exceed its appointed limits. But the avaricious man is not restrained by time, knows no boundary, yields not to the order of succession, but mimics the rush of fire, touching all, devouring all, desiring all he sees. “The eye is not satisfied with seeing” (Eccl. 1:8), nor is the avaricious man satisfied with what he receives. “Hell hath not said, It is enough” (Prov. 27:20), nor does the avaricious man ever say he has enough; but what profit comes of this? Sleeplessness, cares, and anxieties. The Judge is awaited, yet the usurer schemes to avoid being brought to judgment; he plots by night, seeking wicked allies to procure false witnesses, to oppress the helpless. He commits violence even in court, concealing the truth, harming both the judge by deception and the oppressed by his usury. Some things he uses openly; others he buries for uncertain hopes, abandoning true hope for such vain ones. For if he hid wealth for the sake of hope, it would be for eternal hope; but now he conceals unknown riches under his bed, thinking to avert future ruin. But whether need will come is uncertain. Yet the time will surely come when he will regret the misordering of his wealth. This is evident, and I vouch for it. What are you doing, wretched man? Why hide your treasure in the earth? When will you use what you have? When will you enjoy it, always consumed by the cares of acquisition? Do you not employ every means to take what belongs to your neighbor? “His house blocks my light,” he says, “it causes disturbance, it shelters wanderers.” If you desire your neighbor’s house and he will not part with it, you must flee to the farthest regions of the earth we inhabit. If this is impossible, then at the first thought restrain your impulse to evil, O man; be content with what you have acquired, and give thanks for what you have, knowing that splendid houses built by usury stand empty of inhabitants, and vast fields multiplied by oppression are often barren. For God’s vengeance often precedes the final judgment, turning unjustly gained houses to ruin, rendering them empty instead of abounding with countless wealth and bright splendor. He who seeks another’s will, in a short time, weep for losing his own. What destroyed Naboth the Jezreelite? Was it not Ahab’s desire for his vineyard?
Remember that day when “the wrath of God is revealed from heaven” (Rom. 1:18). Remember the glorious coming of Christ, when “they that have done good shall rise unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of judgment” (Jn. 5:29). Let these things trouble you, but let the commandment not trouble you at all. How shall I exhort you? What shall I say? You desire not the kingdom, you fear not Gehenna; whence will your soul’s healing come? When neither the dreadful terrify nor the pleasant delight, it is clear we speak to a heart of stone. I would wish you, usurer, to rest a little from unjust deeds and give silence to your thoughts, that you might consider the end of such striving. You have plowed fields stretching for many stadia, sown lands for yet more, mountains, fields, groves, rivers, meadows. What follows? Do not three cubits alone await you? Is not the weight of a small stone sufficient to cover your enclosed flesh? Why do you act lawlessly? Why do your hands gather barrenness and fuel for eternal fire? Will you ever sober from this drunkenness? Will you be healed in mind? Will you come to yourself? Will you ever set before your eyes the judgment seat of Christ? What will you answer when the oppressed surround you, crying out before the righteous Judge? What will you do? What advocates will you hire? What witnesses will you present? How will you deceive the Judge whom none can deceive? There are no orators there, no eloquence to obscure the Judge’s truth; no flatterers follow, no riches, no honors; forsaken by friends, without helpers, without advocates, speechless, shamed, seized, trembling, sorrowful, alone, without boldness. Wherever you look, you will see plain accusations of your evil: here the tears of the orphan, there the sighs of the widow; elsewhere the poor whom you struck, the slaves you tormented, the neighbors you provoked; all will rise against you, a grim chorus of your wicked deeds surrounding you. There is no denial, for every shameless mouth is silenced, as the deeds themselves testify against each, not with voices but appearing as they were done by us. Let us then flee from avarice, that we may escape the punishment threatening us and become partakers of the blessings to come, in Christ Jesus our Lord, to whom be glory and power with His unoriginate Father and the most holy and life-giving Spirit, now and ever, and unto endless ages of ages, amen.