Fr Mark Schultz

Dear Friend,

At the beginning of this year, I embraced a commitment, as part of my Rule of Life, to say the Daily Office each day (when I was saying it privately) from the 1662 Book of Common Prayer (and using the 1662 lectionary) through the remainder of the 2019-2020 liturgical year. It’s been an amazing experience thus far, and I’m eager to eventually share what the experience has taught me regarding the classical Anglican charism…though at some other time, dear Friend!

Right now, though, the older lectionary is working through the amazing and richly beautiful book of The Wisdom of Solomon, one of the apocryphal texts, and it’s quickly become my favorite of the deuteron-canonical books (sorry, Tobit!). And this morning’s Psalm appointed in the ’79 lectionary returned me to a passage from Wisdom that was (by the serendipity of grace) appointed just a few days ago. The Psalmist writes today, “Do not fret yourself because of evildoers, do not be jealous of those who do wrong.”

And in Wisdom 2:23-24, we read: “God created us for incorruption, and made us in the image of his own eternity, but through the devil’s envy death entered the world, and those who belong to his company experience it.” The first two chapters of Wisdom make the case very clearly: death entered the world out of envy for the good.

And this is, I think, a very instructive way of understanding envy: as an invitation to death to inhabit, inflect, and order our desires. Beloved, there are lots of things worth desiring in this world, but nothing worth desiring ought to be envied. Envy makes of a good an object meant to be appropriated to oneself, rather than a gift meant to be given and received; envy alienates a good from the fabric of the Good to which it’s meant to refer and in which it ought to be embedded, making of the lesser good an end and not a means to the greatest Good (God!) to which all things are providentially ordered; envy is violence against the good.

Our envy of “those who do wrong” often arises not merely from a desire for the goods they've appropriated to themselves (not only material goods, but immaterial ones like power), but from a desire for something like justice: why should the wicked have and the righteous have not? Why ought the wicked be allowed to accumulate goods while the righteous so often seem prevented? And even here, despite our desire for justice, our envy is an invitation to death. Our Psalm today keeps inviting us not to envy the wicked in any way at all, whether for the sake of their goods or for the sake of justice, but to re-commit ourselves to the way of righteousness, to the way of love, the way of Our Lord. “Put your trust in the Lord and do good (v3),” the Psalm advises, “Take delight in the Lord (v4a)…commit your way to the Lord (v5a).” Our envy will only serve to enlist us in death’s service, but a recommitment to the way of love, the way of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, will make us, by grace, into instruments of good, wellsprings of life, channels of grace to the world, servants of a Goodness, of a Life, of a Grace that no wickedness can withstand, that death cannot conquer...and that is even now transforming the world. The way of wickedness is not fought through wicked means. Injustice does not produce justice. To light a darkened room, you don’t shovel out darkness: you turn on a light. To fight against evil, you actively desire, pursue, and do the good. Not out of envy, not out of possessiveness, but simply for the sake of the Good, and by the grace of God.

Beloved Friend, let us recommit ourselves to the Good this day, to the will and love of God alive in Jesus Christ!

Under the Mercy,
Fr Mark+