Spiritual Envy is not merely a personality flaw; it is a metaphysical resistance to the Light. When we witness the "Gold" in another—their discipline, their peace, or their perceived proximity to God—and feel a twinge of grief rather than joy, we are experiencing a contraction of charity. This act of envy is like a "mud-throwing" mechanism: an attempt to dim the radiance of others to compensate for our own perceived darkness. This episode diagnoses the subtle "undoing" of reputations and prescribes the transition into Holy Envy—a state where the success of the neighbor becomes the fuel for our own ascent.
Show Notes:
- The Anatomy of Contradiction: Understanding the "mud on the window" effect and how we reflexively deny the virtues of others to protect our ego.
- The "Buts" and "Howevers": How the subtle "undoing" of a reputation through qualifiers is actually a direct assault on Charity.
- Defining Holy Envy: Shifting from sadness at another’s good to a sacred desire to emulate their service to God.
- The Litmus Test of Truth: Distinguishing between honest discernment of character and the envious impulse to diminish a soul that is "ahead" on the path.
You have the concepts, but you need the tool. When the audio ends and the silence returns, don't go back to "trying harder." Use the "5-Minute Prayer Reset" to stabilize your interior life and prepare for the Divine Physician.
TRANSCRIPT
Hello there. Welcome to this week's episode of Midnight Carmelite. In this week's episode, I'm going to talk about St. John of the Cross and how he discusses something called spiritual envy, what this means, and then contrast it with what he calls holy envy. So what is envy? It's sadness about the good of another. If you think of envy, it's sadness about the good of the other, and then the person experiences some kind of grief about it. In the case of spiritual envy, sadness comes from the fact that the person is ahead of them in the spiritual life. He says in the English "road to perfection," and then he says something interesting: they don't want to hear others praised. If someone else is praised for the spiritual life, they attack that person and say they're not worthy of that. He says literally in the next sentence that because they can't hear others being praised, they contradict and undo these compliments as much as possible. Let's talk about that. What is a contradiction? A contradiction, obviously in philosophy, is if you have A, there's not A; it's something that is either one way or the other. What they're saying is—and I'm not thinking of anyone specific—but let's say Eric is very far in the spiritual life and Bill is jealous of Eric. Bill will not be able to handle people complimenting Eric, so he'll say Eric isn't a good person or he'll lie and say Eric does X, Y, and Z. Or, they will over-exaggerate the faults of Eric. Think of it like taking a window and throwing mud on it; you're preventing the light from shining through. Even though Eric has the light of God shining through him more purely than Bill, Bill throws mud on Eric so that others who look at Eric will think he is not as good as they thought. That is the first thing John says: they contradict it by saying it's not actually the case that this person is that good. Then he says they undo it. They undo it by saying, for example, if Eric goes in to pray on a regular basis at church—and people do this all the time—let’s say while Eric's doing that, he's always kneeling. I'm not to say that external reverence necessarily means spiritual perfection, but for the sake of argument, we look at this undoing and remember that the contrary here is an outright denial.
If someone says Eric's humble, the person with spiritual envy would say Eric's not humble, he's proud. The "undoing," though, in Spanish is interesting; it's a method of managing the situation, an unraveling and picking apart of the other person's reputation. That would be something like adding "buts" and "howevers" to make the praise less potent. If someone says Eric is humble, instead of saying he's proud, they dilute it and say, "Yeah, he's humble, but I've seen him yell at his wife." They discredit it by saying, "Yeah, he's good, but I've seen better," or by saying, "I think you're overemphasizing the goodness here." All these things are very insidious for spiritual envy. John says it's contrary to charity and quotes First Corinthians 13, saying instead of being upset about the truth being said, you should rejoice in the truth of someone. To not do that is spiritually envious and against charity. So, what is this holy envy then? John says it has three things: when they become sad at not having the virtues, instead of saying the contrary and undoing them, they rejoice in the truth and are happy that others are ahead of them. They rejoice in that goodness because they want to be serving God just like those people. That's how we all should be. Spiritual envy is insidious and I've seen plenty of it; it's sick. Now, just to be clear, there are times where the truth is that someone seems some way and they're actually not—that’s obvious. But the key is the truth of it. If you're going contrary to the truth because you're sad at the good of another, then you have spiritual envy. What you should be saying is, "Man, I'm so glad this person's ahead of me. Praise God, this is awesome. I want to get there, too." That's holy envy. I know this is a brief one, but it's a deep one, and I will talk to you next time.
