Published in the bulletin of Holy Ghost Catholic Church in Knoxville, TN, on the Solemnity of All Saints.

My dear Parishioners,
Peace! There are six (6) “In Brief” articles in the Catechism of the Catholic Church addressing the Tenth Commandment of the Decalogue, ‘You shall not covet your neighbor’s goods.’ The following is a reflection on CCC 2553.
The Tenth Commandment, ‘You shall not covet your neighbor’s goods’, calls us to the virtue of brotherly love and warns us away from the vice of envy. The term “envy” comes from the Old French envie and from the Latin invidia meaning hostility, ill will. The envious are discontented or have resentful longing aroused by the possessions, qualities, or good fortune of another. When we feel discontented or a resentful longing is aroused within us by the possessions, qualities or good fortune of another we are envious. The Latin word vitium, meaning any sort of defect, is the origin of our word “vice.” Saint Thomas Aquinas (+1274) cites Saint John Damascene (+ 749) to the effect that “envy is a species of sorrow” and that “envy is sorrow for another’s good” (De fide Orthodoxa ii, 14; Summa Theologiae II-II Q. 36, A. 1). Grief at another’s prosperity is, in a way, the very same as envy.
The sinfulness of envy is alluded to by Saint Paul in Sacred Scripture (cf. Psalm 36:1; 72:2–3; Galatians 5:16). Envy is always evil. Saint Thomas bases his teaching that envy is a mortal sin, in part, on Job 5:2. Pope Saint Gregory the Great (+ 604) points out that envy is a capital sin (cf. Moralia, xxxi, 45). It was “by the envy of the devil” that “death came into the world” (cf. Wisdom 2:24).
Envy is not the only “capital vice” out there. Together with envy as a capital vice are pride, lust, greed (or avarice), wrath (or anger), gluttony, sloth. Saint Thomas and Saint Gregory the Great, among others identify these capital sins (cf. Summa Theologiae I-II Q. 84, A. 4; Moralia xxxi, 17). The moral virtues, brotherly love, humility, chastity, generosity, patience, temperance, and diligence, are opposed to the aforementioned vices. The virtues and the vices are able to be recognized even without the aid of grace, faith or revelation. The pagan Aristotle recognized that virtue makes us good and our work good (Ethics ii, 6). As followers of Jesus Christ, we have grace at our disposal to help us live virtuous lives together with supernatural motivation to want to live according to the nature the good God has given us and redeemed at so great a price. The root of the word “virtue” is the Latin term vir, meaning man. God calls us to holiness and virtue. Virtue is the stable disposition to do good, even in the face of difficulty, with joy and ease (cf. Summa Theologiae I-II Q. 55, A. 1–5). If we have a stable disposition to do evil we are on the path of vice. If our doing good is haphazard and irregular we are not yet on the path of virtue.
God bless you!
Father John Arthur Orr