Letter 864: Virtue must be practiced with all one's strength — not merely admired from a distance.
Do not seek wealth, O good man — that father of arrogance, that begetter of contempt, that patron of pleasures, that craftsman of every vice, that robs man of his friendship with God. But seek instead the riches that neither moth nor rust can corrupt, and that no thief can steal. For earthly wealth is a treacherous friend: it comes uninvited and departs without warning; it promises security and delivers anxiety; it offers freedom and imposes slavery. The rich man thinks he possesses his wealth, but in truth his wealth possesses him. He cannot sleep for fear of losing it; he cannot enjoy it for desire of increasing it; he cannot share it for dread of diminishing it. And in the end, death strips it all away, and the rich man stands naked before his Judge, no different from the poorest beggar — save that the beggar may have learned humility through his poverty, while the rich man has learned nothing through his wealth but pride. Therefore set your heart not on the things of this world, which are passing away, but on the things of heaven, which endure forever. Lay up for yourselves treasures where the heart will find its lasting rest, in the kingdom that has no end. For the love of money is, as the apostle teaches, the root of all evils; and some, by craving it, have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many sorrows. Therefore let us learn from the example of those who have chosen the better part — who have stored up treasures in heaven rather than on earth, who have invested in the eternal rather than the temporal, and who will receive on the last day a return on their investment that exceeds all calculation and all imagination.
AI-assisted translation — This translation was produced with AI assistance and has not been peer-reviewed. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek below for scholarly use.
Latin / Greek Original
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