SPEAKER_01 0:00

From the McGrath Institute for Church Life and OSV podcast, this is Church Life Today. I'm Leonard DiLorenzo. There is a sin that has learned to survive by not looking like one. We have made room for it, quietly, and the way we work and compete and measure ourselves against the person beside us. We have given it respectable names, ambition, drive, a healthy edge. Everyone feels it, we tell ourselves. So perhaps it cannot be helped. And what cannot be helped, we assume, cannot really be a vice. But the Christian tradition never granted it that cover. It saw this thing as anti-life. It traced it back to Satan himself, not his first sin, but the bitter fruit of his pride, the refusal to bear that another might be beloved. It warned that this sin shrinks the heart, isolates the soul, and turns its poison first upon the one who harbors it. That to give way to it is in the old and startling image to lay the hangman against your own heart. It corrodes friendships and families, churches and nations, and it does all this while convincing us it is only natural. What feeds it is a lie, the fear that there is not enough love to go around, that another's blessing must mean my own diminishment, that I am the less favored child. And if that is the lie, then the remedy is not merely to try harder to be good, it is to be brought somewhere we can finally see the truth, that before God there is no greater and no lesser, only beloved children, and that the gift given at the altar is not divided when it is shared, but multiplied. My guest today has spent years unveiling this sin and naming its cure. She is Mishon Matthiasin of the Department of Theology at the University of Notre Dame, and her work traces it through Scripture and the Fathers, through Aquinas and Dante, all the way to the one place she believes it can finally be undone. The Eucharist.

SPEAKER_02 2:39

Thank you so much for the invitation. Great to be here.

SPEAKER_01 2:42

So you have been studying and teaching on something that is hiding everywhere in the Western world, which we possibly, as you point out, consider acceptable because maybe it seems to most of us inevitable, and that's the vice of envy. So I wanted to start by asking you how, as you see it, envy tends to be regarded today, if it's thought about at all. Like what's the commonplace contemporary view of envy?

SPEAKER_02 3:10

Yeah, I think uh we could begin by suggesting that I'd say the average person is very confused about what envy actually is. When I've told people that I'm working on a project on Envy, um, I'd get reactions such as, well, what's so bad about what's so bad about envy? Or um how is that the same or different from jealousy, et cetera? Um and isn't isn't it something that we want for others to be envious of us, which is really uh sort of surprising. Um one of the things I uh did when I was uh beginning to do some research on this is um just look online, did like a Google search on products who have adopted the the title Envy. Um I mean, from having a new varietal of Apple called Envy. It's not very good, by the way. Uh you can you can pass it by um to all sorts of cosmetics and um fertilizer for your garden, um, all sorts of well, and then of course the the company now called NVIDIA, having to do with artificial intelligence, um as if as if envy is something that uh is good to cultivate.

SPEAKER_01 4:35

Um and NVIDIA is in in particular the power behind much of the artificial intelligence, right? So that which is inside and makes it makes it move. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 4:45

Yes. And you and you want people to buy shares in this and so that they can prosper and be the envy of others.

SPEAKER_04 4:52

Right.

SPEAKER_02 4:53

Um so I think it's it's just surprising to me that when we we look back, for example, at the Middle Ages, when um there's all these examples of uh preaching and catechisms on the seven deadly sins, and envy is clearly right one of them. I think today um envy has, we could say, lost its teeth. Um it's seen as something that, well, everyone experiences envy. It's it's normal. Uh it can't be, it can't be that bad. Um and given our situation today of social media, um, you know, be it Instagram or Facebook, um, envy thrives in an environment in which we can compare ourselves and our lives and our gifts to what others uh have. And so this capacity now to see what everyone else is doing is so exasperated that um no one can really help not to be envious of others. And yeah, I mean, it's just it's just very difficult in such an environment, um comparative environment, not to um fall into it. Yeah, right. Yeah. And so if everyone has it and everyone is sort of looking at one another, um it's it's just a part of life.

SPEAKER_01 6:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 6:29

Right.

SPEAKER_01 6:29

Yeah. Well, I'm glad you brought up uh a few moments ago the uh distinction perhaps between envy and jealousy, because since you mentioned it, then I don't have to pose it as if it's a question I have, which it is. But could you help us to understand what is the difference um between envy and jealousy?

SPEAKER_02 6:48

Sure. Well, let me just say that the the difficulty in distinguishing uh the two um goes way back to uh ancient philosophy. Um it was really Aristotle who first pointed out um that um jealousy is different than envy, right? Jealousy, and this it comes from the word zeelos, zeal, is um something that's actually positive because you see a good that someone else possesses um that you want, right? So it has to do with wanting to emulate the good that you see in someone else. So the early fathers of the church sort of uh they were aware of this distinction, um, but even then they would write homilies um on zeal and envy and and and treat the two as if they were the same, right? But they but they are uh something quite distinct. But when we use jealousy today, which is where uh which is derivative of zeelos, um, it it most frequently means, or it should most properly mean, let me put it that way, that someone has something that properly is ours, properly belongs to us.

SPEAKER_01 8:19

So um when we would say I'm jealous of this person because they're getting the recognition that I really think I should receive. We would use it that way. But you're saying you're gonna say that's a good idea. Yeah, that's actually envy. Yeah, exactly. But we would say I'm jealous.

SPEAKER_02 8:36

Correct.

SPEAKER_01 8:36

Right, right. Yeah. So this is the misuse.

SPEAKER_02 8:39

And jealousy almost always involves a third. So someone is um, so for example, in a the most obvious, right? Uh boyfriend and girlfriend, and then here comes a new person into the scene who is taking your girlfriend, right, uh, away from you. Or um this is uh how St. Francis de Sales speaks about it in a married couple um when suddenly um the wife is attending to someone else and not properly right to to her husband or her her family. So that that's that's jealousy. Yeah, right. Um but we tend to say when someone's going to Rome and we're left at home, I'm jealous, right? But it but that's not really the proper use, right, of jealousy.

SPEAKER_01 9:34

So then how does envy, how is it distinguished from that?

SPEAKER_02 9:40

Envy is specifically um a sorrow um over another's good. Um and that good could be uh a spiritual good, um financial good, um honor, recognition. Um someone got promotion and you did not, right? Um but what envy does is it it makes the one who's envious feel inferior to the other. So this sense of inferiority um always seems to come into play with envy.

SPEAKER_01 10:31

So what does envy a target as its enemies? Like what what goods in life does enemy or envy, not enemy, does envy uh undo or make render nearly impossible?

SPEAKER_02 10:52

Well, I think the the first and most obvious one is that um envy undoes charity. We ought to respond with love to the good of our neighbor, but instead, right, we we react with envy, and that one of the primary daughter vices of envy is is hatred. So for someone like Thomas Aquinas, right, envy is uh so grave because it is the opposite of charity, right? We should be responding with love and with charity to the good um that our neighbors have, that they possess, that they've been given, for example. So um it undoes um proper community with others, we could say. Um since envy is primarily also about, or it occurs primarily within those that we are close to, right? Um Aristotle says it really only uh occurs among proximates, those who are near us. Um that means that it begins to disintegrate and dissolve those relationships, right? Envy among siblings, universally, it seems, right? Um, envy among those who we work with, right? Envy among those communities that are most important to forming us and uh to our daily life. Um and of course, finally, and and ultimately, it it destroys our relationship with God.

SPEAKER_01 12:39

When you say, you know, it it deals with those who are proximate to us. I want to go back to something you were noting before, um, which is in our highly digitized culture where those who are not proximate to us are presented as proximate to us. Right.

SPEAKER_04 12:57

Right.

SPEAKER_01 12:57

Um how do you think this has sort of inflamed the disposition and posture of envy?

SPEAKER_02 13:05

Yeah, no, inflammation is a good word, exacerbation is is is also uh appropriate. Um yeah, it's made because of the ubiquity, right, of it, right? Our neighbor is now everywhere, is global, right? So that uh the the field of comparison is is is immense. Um and I think the other thing is because of the sort of addictive nature of uh social media, um, those who begin to experience the envy that it uh that emerges within them, looking at all these others, um even though they recognize that it's making them miserable to see this, the addictive nature of it is such that they can't they can't pull their eyes away from it, right? And I don't think I mentioned that um the Latin word invidia and in envidere comes from the Latin in invidere, the verb, which videre means to see. And envy is an improper way of seeing a distortion, right, of how we see. Um but yeah, so when when when all of this is right before our eyes, it's it's even more difficult to heal, right? To pull ourselves away from, to begin to heal.

SPEAKER_01 14:32

Yeah, and to go back to um maybe this distinction you were helping us to draw between jealousy and envy, if I'm tracking correctly, it's not that we look out and we see what others have or what they're getting from others and we necessarily want that. It's envy, if I'm understanding correctly, is more the desire just to level the other. Like we want their downfall or their uh the draining of the good in them. Um and we have taken some malicious delight in that, some secret delight in that possibility. Right? Yeah. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 15:10

So what envy leads to, um, so Thomas Aquinas, for example, suggests that um envy can remain a venial sin as long as we recognize the inclination within us, but then we don't let our reason surrender to it. Right. Once we let our reason surrender to it, um, and um it develops into what uh he calls as a capital vice, namely because it has, it gives birth to daughter vices like gossiping, detraction, and as you suggest, trying to pull someone right back down to your level so that you don't have that sense of inferiority, right? Um that's when it becomes really grievous, right? And and and sin.

SPEAKER_01 16:05

Yeah. In reading some of your work, I was really struck by a particularly insightful and powerful claim you put forth, which is that envy as a sin, as it becomes a sin, is in fact a sin or possibly can become a sin against the Holy Spirit. Yes. And now we're talking about some serious business. So I would love to ask you to unpack that for us a little bit. How is envy a sin against the Holy Spirit, especially when we think about this is a sin, it seems, that's rendered unto others. It has to do with our relationship to others.

SPEAKER_02 16:41

Yeah. So maybe I'm gonna step, uh, take a step back, right, and and suggest that one of the one of the wonderful things about the early fathers is that they they noticed that um the origin of this sin and what's what made it so um debilitating is that it comes directly from the enemy, the evil one. Right. Um, because that's what's at the heart of his entire rebellion, right, uh, against God. So um the father suggests that this is a really, really difficult sin to heal. Um, because we begin to imitate and become part of the cohort of the devil. And what we try to do is fight against God, who is the giver, right, of all good gifts and the one who providently distributes these gifts. So um Cyprian, for example, and uh St. Basil the Great um speak about this uh in very powerful terms, that um we are actually fighting right against God when we become envious. And so correlatively, when we talk about the Holy Spirit, uh one of the names for the Holy Spirit is is is gifts, right? And and since the Holy Spirit is the one who uh also gives gifts, right, according to the need of each, according to what the spirit thinks is needed, right? Um when we start uh suggesting that um Sue and Bill and Greg should not have these particular gifts, um, then it is uh a sin against the Holy Spirit, right? Suggesting that we know better than the Spirit or know better than God how to do how to distribute God's gifts.

SPEAKER_01 18:43

So you pointed out from the fathers would recognize how difficult this sin is to heal from. And much of your work then, especially as you've uh diagnosed and sought to understand better envy and to bring forth uh perhaps a new appreciation of the sin in the modern world, you've also been turning attention to where perhaps the primary place where this sin is healed, which is in the liturgy and in particular uh in the gift of the Eucharist. I was wondering if you could help us to make that turn to help to see if we come to a better understanding of what envy is, perhaps we also come to a better understanding of what the liturgy is and how the liturgy uh performs for us or enrolls us in the therapy of healing, um, of in particular if we just focus here on envy.

SPEAKER_02 19:40

Yeah, let me just say um, in order to to segue uh into that, um one of the insights uh particularly of Gregory the Great, um, but also this is this is present in in Basil and Cyprian and other and other facets. Um, but what Gregory the Great tries to uh show us is that if we take seriously um this image of being the body of Christ, right? Uh 1 Corinthians 12, Paul, right? Um, what the gifts that others have, he says, actually are ours already.

SPEAKER_04 20:22

Right.

SPEAKER_02 20:22

So we need not, right? Uh we need not think that we've been deprived of these gifts because they belong to us as being part of the body of Christ. And Saint Basil would in in similar terms say, yeah, the gifts that others have are for us, in fact. Yeah, and Cyprian tells us that if we want healing, we know where to go, namely to the sacrament of the cross. And when he says that, I interpret that as the Eucharist because he prefaces this by saying the baptized are oriented, they know who they are, and they're oriented to the altar. So that since we already um know where to go to the sacrament, which is love and which is charity, which we receive from the Eucharist, that's where he says healing is. All right, so when I uh try to um take us to what I think is the antidote to envy um in the liturgy, I approach it from a number of levels. I mean, theologically or systematically, um this is the event in which believers are taken up into the life of the Trinity. I mean, it begins when we walk in the door and put our dip our fingers in the in the font and make the sign of the cross. We're already walking in the name of the Triune God. And that's how our liturgy begins, also, in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. That triune life, right, in which there is no envy, but this entire mutuality of gift, we're already, right, by virtue of our baptism being drawn into that in the liturgy. So it's it's it's a pregnant place in which we can be transformed by that divine power and that divine way of relating, I guess you could say. So that's that's sort of on a systematic level. Um we also um say we we liturgical theologians, I should say, um, that the Holy Spirit is is primarily active in our Eucharistic liturgies. We know that it's not only through the words of consecration, but the the calling down of the Holy Spirit upon the gifts that transform them, and then the calling down on the Holy Spirit of the Holy Spirit upon us to transform us, that um it's at this pregnant place in the liturgy that the spirit desires to transform everything that we lay out nakedly before him. So if we know that we are feeling envy and perhaps even envy of the person behind us, right, in the next pew, then it's the opportune place to lay out that envy for transformation.

SPEAKER_01 24:02

I want to pick up oh go ahead. I was just gonna say, I want to pick up some of these uh pieces haven't thought along with you a little bit from what you've read and and recognizing some of the really powerful things that that you're saying. So, one, uh following from what you brought forth from us from Gregory the Great, that if we truly take seriously the body of Christ, that what belongs to one member indeed belongs to all, um, and that uh what is the good in the other is also therefore intended for me. And it brings me to think again about um something I learned from you in reading the work, which was that envy uh almost necessitates or thrives on the myth of scarcity, that there is not enough to go around. And I I was thinking in all kinds of ways the way in which we perpetuate that myth, that it's not just an individual myth that I I consider things scarce, but actually we sort of reinforce that for one another, that there is scarcity. In fact, we often withhold from one another and create the conditions of scarcity. Um I want I I just want to invite you to to speak to that a little bit with us. The the the function of the myth of scarcity for what is it, the fueling or the propagation of envy. Um and it maybe if we think about just that, come back to um the liturgy and the economy of giving that um yeah, that put that enrolls us in a different way of being.

SPEAKER_02 25:32

So, in my reading of um sociologist and anthropologist on on envy, um, they take this to be a truth, that um human beings living together, there's always going to be a scarcity of goods. Um, so that envy is going to be absolutely inevitable for human beings coming together, right, to live. Um so uh for them, it's not it's not a myth, but a reality. For the Christian believer, um and for the Jewish believer uh as well, um, we are not to think about God as a miserly giver, as if God who is the giver of all gifts only has a certain number, right, uh is limited in what God can disperse. Um so theologically it's problematic for Jews and Christians to imagine that um the one who gives everything, including existence itself, um, could somehow only have a limited amount of goods to give. So it's a myth for us as believers that that um there's a scarcity around. And if if someone else has um more particular goods than than we do, um then that means there's less for me. Um but that's that's a problematic way for for for believers to um approach right the reality um of existence. It is true though. I mean, if you think about it, well, if someone gets promoted um and I don't, I mean, that seems to be well, well then therefore that position is gone. And so there was one promotion. There's two of us. And there's nothing for me. Yeah. Therefore. Um, so it's really difficult for us to um expand the way we see, right? To to see with the eyes of of Christ or or the eyes of God that um there's more. Yes, there's always more. There's always an abundance, yes, yeah, flowing out uh from God.

SPEAKER_01 27:59

Yeah. So in that way, I mean, there is a scarcity of oil, and there's a scarcity of uh stock shares in NVIDIA in Nvidia, as you said, or in SpaceX, to make this very uh and uh because there's a scarcity, the price goes up on these things and you're in competition over them. Uh there was one promotion and there were two or five of us, right? Um, so it seems then, as you're as you're pointing this out to us, it's not uh it has more to do with what is valued and how and the sort of um field in which we value things. Um and I'm thinking, even as you're you're pointing this out, to thinking about Genesis three and the fall, what what did the serpent do? Uh well, a lot of things, but one thing is the serpent made God's creatures question the very nature of the garden. The garden, as God's command says, everything here is a gift to you. It's all given to you. Yeah, just don't eat this one thing, right? And it's made that one thing into everything. Um, that the thing that seems to be withheld is now that's the basis of valuation and that's the basis of reasoning, as you as you pointed out. So the myth of scarcity in that view seems to be have been the shift in what is valued and how things are valued.

SPEAKER_02 29:25

Yeah, no, that sounds right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:28

The second thing then, and this was following on you taking us kind of into the church, right? As we enter into the liturgy, the first thing, you know, maybe our entrance in is past the baptismal font and signing ourselves with the sign of the cross. After thinking about the myth of scarcity, as you were talking about, I was also thinking about the shift of environment. Because as you were talking about before, say with uh social media or with our digitized culture where everybody uh is seemingly proximate and everything is a competition between what is valued and what's not, and you get these number of likes or recognition or whatever, and I don't. But it seems that when you walk into a church, you don't just go into another place that's like all the other places. You've come into a different type of place, a different kind of environment, right? Like this is the triune place where it's actually not marked by envy. It's the over the overabundance of giving. Um so I was just thinking that, uh thinking about that um kind of in reaction to the way you were describing that to us. And it almost presented to me the image of like walking into, I don't even know how I saw this, like walking into a totally different environment, not just a a different place within the same environment. That makes sense.

SPEAKER_02 30:44

Yeah. I mean, the other thing that um worship together does for us, one of the other things, is that um it reminds us that before God, we're all equal and we're all equally beggars, right, before God. Um, so it doesn't matter um if some other person got that promotion and you didn't.

SPEAKER_01 31:08

When it comes to worship, we're all, I mean, there's there's a the great leveling is the great leveling so that we may all be lifted together.

SPEAKER_02 31:18

Right. Yeah. And all of us um in our worship are finally dependent upon um the perfect worshiper who is who is Christ. And so we we come together uh and uh allow him to perfect our worship, but it doesn't exist in that perfection doesn't exist in any of us individually, right? So so yeah, we're all equally beggars and we all receive right um from the Eucharist, right, the same. Right. It's it's it's pure gift uh given to us. Um yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:56

I guess here at the end of this this conversation, I I want to ask you Can I say one other thing?

SPEAKER_02 32:03

Yeah, well yeah, absolutely. Um I'm just I'm just thinking about um how for human beings, I mean, one of the things that that we think is um particularly scarce is time, right? And the time we have here in our earthly life to uh get goods, to be recognized, to be honored, to um right uh leave something behind, for example. Um and I think that also that sense of the scarcity of time contributes to to envy um because we're all uh with the short period of of life that we have, we're all right, grasping to to be elevated, to get to right. So um I think the liturgy tries to uh undo that sense of time that we have come to come to live in uh and uh come to right um this notion that right, we have to live 24-7 and and get everything done, and right, there's only a certain amount of time to get the recognition that we that we need, for for example, for uh for ourselves and even for for our families. But the liturgy tries to teach us that um no time is a gift. And um in fact, the liturgy is an experience of the eruption of that sort of time clock of our normal life, and it reminds us um that with the coming of Christ and with his coming in this very liturgy, uh, time has exploded. And and right, time and eternity kiss, as we can say, and and we're lifted up out of that sort of the rat race of of time. So I think it's that's why I think over over time, right, uh as we uh right experience the liturgy, um, hopefully we come to be relieved of that kind of uh sense of scarcity and and pressure.

SPEAKER_01 34:25

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_02 34:25

Yeah, I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 34:26

Yeah. Oh no, this is fantastic. In fact, I think it also kind of leads into what I was gonna ask anyway. So this is this is really nice. I was gonna ask you to help us think about, you know, if if the liturgy and our um approach to and reception of the Eucharist is indeed so necessary and healing for us. I want to think about like how do we individually or as communities prepare better for the entrance into the liturgical life, into the Sunday liturgy, this Sunday, right? Um because we also, and this is maybe our commonplace view of anything having to do with grace, like we just be there and it happens for us. But of course, this is not how grace works. It responds, um, it initiates in us, but then also responds to um our own movement, our own will, our own work, even. So I just want to think about like the preparation. Uh, how might we prepare ourselves better, especially in view of this the sickness of envy? How might we prepare ourselves better for being engaged in the liturgy, engaging ourselves?

SPEAKER_02 35:40

Yeah, that's that's a really uh wonderful question. Um, I have to remind myself frequently enough when I go through the the doors of a church that I'm entering into another sort of environment altogether. I mean, it's not like I'm just going in Starbucks, right? I mean, when you go through the door, you're you know, it's it's it's actually meant, right, uh as a kind of boundary, so that you're a threshold to something, to something different, right? To something else. Um, I'm just gonna say this to get it off my uh chest, but uh it's it's saddened me a good deal um to see now in some vegetables of churches screens, which seem to just take us right back out, right, uh into the outer world. This is supposed to be something um, yeah, something different. And the focus is on God, I I yeah, this is just a thing for me, and screened. It's it's just one one of the things to distract us, right? Uh uh to look at. So on that note, um, before you even leave uh your your house, leave your phone behind, walk to your local parish if possible. Um someone like uh Romano Guardini uh will say um the night before, begin to think about, um, I mean, he doesn't even say, you know, look at the readings or which is something that we uh should do. Um, but he says, begin to think about what it is that you want to bring to the altar, right, and and lay before God. So uh if you're experiencing this shrinking of your heart from envy, um this is the I mean, begin to think about this the night before, that this is what you want to set before the Lord and his spirit for transformation. Um so that would be that would be uh yeah, a major suggestion.

SPEAKER_01 37:53

We need his sacrifice with a small sacrifice of our own.

SPEAKER_02 37:56

Right.

SPEAKER_01 37:56

Yeah, really love that. Well, Alexander Michonne, thank you so much for helping us to begin to think anew about Envy, and we'll um be sure to kind of share some of your work as it becomes more available to uh our listening audience in in uh show notes and whatnot. But thank you so much for this conversation.

SPEAKER_02 38:16

You're quite welcome.

SPEAKER_01 38:17

And thanks as always to all of you for joining us on Church Life Today.

SPEAKER_00 38:26

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