116. Envy: Sorrow at Another's Good and the Hatred of Excellence

"But by the envy of the devil, death came into the world." - Wisdom 2:24

Envy is sorrow at another's good insofar as that good is perceived as lessening one's own excellence, standing, or glory. It is not the mere desire to possess a good another has. Emulation may move a person to imitate excellence. Envy wants the excellence diminished, hidden, discredited, or transferred.

This vice is especially destructive because it attacks good precisely as good. Lust or gluttony pursues a created pleasure in disorder. Envy suffers because something worthy exists in another.

The book of Wisdom connects death's entrance with the envy of the devil. Cain's anger rises because Abel's sacrifice is accepted. Joseph's brothers cannot bear the love and promise shown to him. The chief priests deliver Our Lord from envy. In each case another's good is treated as an accusation that must be removed.1

Envy therefore rarely remains an interior sadness. It seeks relief through detraction, mockery, suspicion, obstruction, and secret satisfaction when the envied person falls. The tongue becomes the instrument by which excellence is cut down to a level the envious soul can tolerate.

St. Thomas distinguishes envy from legitimate sorrow. One may grieve because a person misuses power, because an honor was unjustly awarded, or because another's prosperity causes real danger. Envy grieves not at the disorder, but at the good or excellence itself as though another's increase were one's own loss.2

This distinction matters. Appeals to fairness can conceal envy, but accusations of envy can also silence just criticism. The object must be examined honestly: do I oppose an injustice, or do I resent that another possesses a good I wanted for myself?

Religious life does not automatically expel envy. A soul may resent another's knowledge, conversion, family order, courage, prayer, influence, or visible fruit. It may search eagerly for a fault that permits dismissal of the good. Zeal becomes selective: severe toward the rival, indulgent toward the self.

Envy can also resist authority or sanctity. The excellent priest, faithful father, modest woman, disciplined child, or courageous confessor becomes uncomfortable evidence against mediocrity. Instead of imitating the good, the envious soul explains it away as pride, rigidity, privilege, or performance.

Children show envy openly through rivalry, tale-bearing, and inability to rejoice in a sibling's praise. Adults may practice the same vice more politely. A husband or wife may compete for sacrifice to be noticed. Relatives may diminish another household's order. Parents may compare children until affection becomes rivalry.

Justice requires that praise, correction, and responsibility be governed without favoritism. But equality does not require identical gifts, duties, temperaments, or honors. Charity teaches each member to receive his place gratefully and to desire the good of the others.

Pope St. Gregory and St. Thomas identify characteristic fruits of envy: tale-bearing, detraction, rejoicing at another's misfortune, grief at another's prosperity, and finally hatred. These reveal envy even when the soul refuses its name.3

The progression is terrible but intelligible. First another's good causes sorrow. Then speech attacks the good. If the person falls, the soul feels relief. If he continues to flourish, sorrow hardens toward hatred. What began as comparison becomes opposition to charity.

Envy must be opposed concretely:

• thank God deliberately for another's genuine good;
• speak that good truthfully when silence would serve jealousy;
• pray for the person whose excellence causes pain;
• imitate what is imitable instead of diminishing it;
• confess detraction and repair the injured reputation;
• refuse comparison outside the duties God has actually assigned;
• remember that every grace in another member benefits Christ's Mystical Body.

These acts may initially feel dry. Their purpose is to retrain the will to love the good wherever God places it.

Envy is sorrow before another's good and therefore an enemy of communion, gratitude, and truth. It turns excellence into threat and speech into a weapon. Its cure is charity that can rejoice in received goods without demanding possession or recognition.

The pilgrim does not lose when another soul grows in holiness. The City of God is enriched. To rejoice in that good is already to share it through charity; to hate it is to take the devil's side against the work of grace.

See also Gratitude Against Murmuring, Justice in Speech, Brotherly and Sisterly Charity Within the Home, and Mockery, Sarcasm, and the Pleasure of Belittling.