Three Kinds of Riches

Riches and possessions are taken in Holy Scripture in three different ways: as good, as bad, and as indifferent. The bad ones are those of which it is said, “The rich have been in want and have gone hungry,” and, “Woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.” To have cast off these riches is the height of perfection. It is the mark of those poor whom the Lord commends in the gospel with the saying, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven”; and in the Psalm, “This poor man cried, and the Lord heard him”; and again, “The poor and needy will praise your name.” [a]

Those riches are good whose gaining is the work of great virtue and merit. David praises the righteous man who possesses them, saying, “The generation of the righteous will be blessed; glory and riches are in his house, and his righteousness endures forever”; and again, “The ransom of a man’s life is his riches.” Of these riches it is said in the Revelation to the one who does not have them and is, to his shame, poor and naked: “I will begin,” he says, “to vomit you out of my mouth. Because you say, I am rich and wealthy and have need of nothing, and do not know that you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked, I counsel you to buy from me gold tried in the fire, so that you may be made rich, and may be clothed in white garments, and the shame of your nakedness may not appear.”

There are also some that are indifferent, that is, that can be made either good or bad, for they become one or the other according to the will and character of those who use them. Of these the blessed apostle says: “Charge the rich of this world not to be proud, nor to trust in the uncertainty of riches, but in God, who gives us all things richly to enjoy; to do good, to give readily, to share with others, to lay up in store for themselves a good foundation, so that they may lay hold on the true life.” These are the riches the rich man in the gospel kept and never gave out to the poor, while the beggar Lazarus was lying at his gate and longing to be fed with his crumbs. And so he was condemned to the unbearable flames and everlasting heat of the fire of hell.