While pride is said to have been the cause of Satan’s downfall, and through him, humanity, we are also told in Scripture that avarice (greed, the love of money) is the root of all evil. While these two claims might seem to contradict each other, it is possible to see them as working together. Vices can connect with each other, and emerge together, similar to the way virtues connect and emerge with each other. When we embrace one vice, we often are embracing and acting upon many others with it. While pride can be seen as the primary sin of Satan, humanity can be seen as being influenced both by pride and by avarice when it received the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. For, in the act, not only did humanity indicate it wanted to be like God, thinking it can (and thus showing pride), it thought, by being like God, it could take over and possess the world for itself (taking it away from God through its greed). If we wanted, we could add another deadly sin into the equation and say that in the consumption of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, gluttony was involved, because humanity let its desire for earthly pleasure consume them, until at last, Adam and Eve ate what they had no right to eat. Thus, we can see represented in the story of Adam and Eve the human desire to be like God, to have its will appeased, and with that appeasement, to have its desire to dominate and control the world. Pride says we can be like God. Avarice says we can and should take and possess all things. Thus, avarice has us look at the goods of the earth, telling us that they are naturally ours, that we can and should possess them for ourselves. In reality, all things are God’s, and we are to be their stewards, using them, but not abusing them, making sure they are justly distributed to those in need. The goods of the earth, made, in part, for our own good, can, if used right, serve as tools for our own good, even our salvation, but when abused, they can become the means of our own undoing (and with it, all kinds of further corruption):
According to the diversity of uses, some people perish because of the earthly possessions that they seize with great greed; others, however, are saved when they see in the beauty of these things the beauty of the Creator, praising him for his providence; or when through a work of mercy they buy heavenly goods with them.[1]
Saying that the goods of the earth can be tools of salvation should not make us think that they, by themselves, can and will save us (or we, by using them, will save ourselves all by ourselves); salvation, of course, requires grace, grace which comes to us from Christ. Our salvation will depend upon our response to that grace. It will not be forced upon us; God gives us freedom, and so, the possibility to reject salvation and all the transformation grace brings upon us. To be saved, we must cooperate with grace, becoming better over time, doing what is right, and that includes, using the goods of the earth in a just fashion. Thus, they can become tools with our salvation, but only if we engage them with the grace which God has given us, and only, then, if we use them wisely. We must be willing use them to help others, to bring justice and mercy into the world, and not only look after our private interests or desires. When we do so, we find ourselves becoming more just and merciful, which is what God wants from us, until at last, we have embraced such justice and mercy through our actions they become a part of who we are and not just what we do to be saved. This is why Jesus, when preaching about the eschatological judgment to come, says that those who show mercy will be known by him and welcomed by him into the kingdom of God.
What we did in the past does not have to indicate what we will do in the future. We can change and become better. That is one of the messages of the Gospel. Jesus’ love for us gives us the means to become perfect, as God is perfect. Thus, we can and should hope that anyone who has been greedy, anyone who has destroyed the lives of others through their greed, will repent. Salvation is always a possibility, a hope that we must have for all. To be sure, true repentance, a true change of heart, requires those who repent to make amends for those they have wrong. If they are able to, they should give back what they unjustly took from others:
But even if there is someone or other who is greedy, who snatches others’ goods, who casts out orphans and evicts widows, at least afterwards, after he has returned in repentance, let him return what he took.[2]
Grace is free but is not cheap. Metanoia, a change of heart, will have us engage virtue and not just stop engaging various vices; it will make us actively seek to do good, to make things better, especially in relation to the harm we have caused. This is why reparations are important for a society which seeks to fix the evils of the past, even as it is important for those who have acted out of greed to embrace justice, and pay back what they can. Those who are unwilling to do so have not fully changed their heart, just as society which is unwilling to do so will find itself stuck in systemic sin:
If on the other hand someone is sick with avaricious greed, which weighs more heavily than any sickness of the soul, since “greed is the root of all evils” [1 Tim 6:10], as the apostle says, to such a person the precept concerning works of mercy is critical, that he may know that he cannot be healed in any other way than by going from being greedy to becoming charitable, generous from being covetous. [3]
Those who reject reparations end up thinking that those who profited from sin should be able to keep the profit, and all the advantages it gives them, even after they “stop” sinning, while those who suffered at their hands should just welcome them as they are, to be happy they have changed. In reality, those who have harmed someone do not desire to make things right, especially if they continue to profit from the sin they have done, causing others to continue to suffer, have a long way off from true repentance:
Those who have gained “the world,” that the wealth of the world, will find that they cannot keep it forever; eventually, it will fall out of their grasp, and then they will come face to face with the evil they have done. They will finally understand why they should have repented when they had the chance. This is what those who have come to know God, and the ways of God, and through it, humanity and human nature, understand: “He who knows human nature says that the world is not an adequate exchange for man’s soul.” [4]
We must always look everyone, even those who have harmed others through their embrace of some injustice, with eyes of love, hoping that they will repent and change for the better; we must not, of course, use our love for them as an excuse to justify or ignore their sin. Rather, our love for them will want them to embrace justice, casting away their sin and all the sin gave them, so that they can be saved. The more, then, we love, the more we will want to see justice established in the world. It will lead us to act, in accordance to our abilities, to help those who have been harmed by injustices, especially those who have been oppressed and turned into outcasts, for what they suffer should never be forgotten. We will use the means we can, finding, in the process, we are engaging grace, becoming better, becoming more just ourselves. And if that means we use various goods of the earth to do this, we will find those goods indeed serve instruments of our own salvation.
[1] St. Isidore of Seville, Sententiae. Trans. Thomas L. Knoebel (New York: Newman Press, 2018), 214.
[2] St. Ambrose, “On Noah” in Treatises on Noah and David. Trans. Brian P. Dunkle, SJ (Washington, DC: CUA Press, 2020), 92.
[3] St. Chromatius of Aquileia, Sermons and Tractates on Matthew. Trans. Thomas P. Scheck (New York: Newman Press, 2018), 51 [Sermon 12].
[4] St. Gregory of Nyssa, Homilies on Ecclesiastes. Trans. Richard McCambly. Ed. John Litteral (Ashland, KY: Litteral’s Christian Library Publications, 2014), 42 [Homily 4].
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