Against Excessive Anxiety

Excessive anxiety about worldly affairs is characteristic of a person who is faithless and faint-hearted. And woe to us if, caring for ourselves, we do not ground our hope in God, who cares for us! If we do not refer to him the visible goods that we enjoy in this present age, how can we expect from him those goods that are promised in the age to come? Let us not be such little-believers, but rather let us seek “first the Kingdom of God…and all these things shall be added”34 to us, according to the word of the Savior.

It is better for us to despise what is not ours—that is, the temporal and the passing—and to desire what is ours—that is, incorruption and immortality. For when we become incorruptible and immortal, we shall be granted the visible contemplation of God, as the Apostles were at the most divine Transfiguration, and we shall partake of the supra-intellectual union with God like the heavenly minds. For we shall be like the angels and sons of God, “being sons of the resurrection” (Luke 20:36).

“There is an evil,” says Ecclesiastes, “which I have seen under the sun: riches kept by their owner to his own hurt; and those riches perish through misfortune…all his days are in darkness and in grief, and in much vexation, and in sickness and in anger” (Eccl 5:12-13:16).