To what has been said above there must be added the refutation of a certain error that spreads everywhere among the rich of this world and greatly hinders a good life and a happy death. The error consists in this: the rich suppose that the wealth they possess is absolutely and simply their own, when they possess it by a just title; and that therefore they may of right spend it, give it away, or squander it, and that no one can say to them: "Why do you act so? Why do you dress so splendidly? Why do you feast so sumptuously? Why do you waste money so freely on keeping dogs or hawks, or on games of chance, or on other amusements?" For they will answer: "What is it to you? Am I not free to do what I will with what is my own?" Now this error is without doubt most grave and most pernicious. For granted that the rich of this world are masters of their wealth in comparison with other men; yet in comparison with God they are not masters, but administrators, or stewards, or bailiffs. And this can be shown by many testimonies.
Hear the royal Prophet: "The earth," he says, "is the Lord's and the fulness thereof: the world, and all they that dwell therein" (Ps. 23); and again elsewhere: "Mine are all the beasts of the woods, the cattle on the hills, and the oxen. If I should be hungry, I would not tell thee: for the world is mine, and the fulness thereof" (Ps. 49); and in the first book of Chronicles, when David had offered for the building of the temple three thousand talents of gold, and seven thousand talents of the most refined silver, and Parian marble in the greatest abundance; and when, following the king's example, the princes of the tribes had offered five thousand talents of gold, ten thousand talents of silver, eighteen thousand talents of brass, and also a hundred thousand talents of iron, David said to God: "Thine, O Lord, is the magnificence, and the power, and the glory, and the victory, and to Thee is praise: for all things that are in heaven and on earth are Thine. Thine is the kingdom, O Lord, and Thou art above all princes; Thine are riches, and Thine is glory; Thou hast dominion over all. And: Who am I, and what is my people, that we should be able to promise Thee all these things? All things are Thine; and what we have received from Thy hand we have given to Thee." (1 Chr. 29) To this may be added the testimony of God Himself, who says through the prophet Haggai: "Mine is the silver, and Mine is the gold" (Hag. 2); which the Lord said so that the people might understand that nothing at all would be wanting for the new building of the temple, since He who ordered the temple to be rebuilt is the very one to whom belongs all the gold and silver that is found in the whole world.
I will add two more testimonies from the New Testament and from the very words of Christ. In Luke there is the parable of the unjust steward. "There was a certain rich man," says the Lord, "who had a steward; and the same was accused unto him, that he had wasted his goods. And he called him, and said to him: How is it that I hear this of thee? Give an account of thy stewardship; for now thou canst be steward no longer." (Luke 16) By the name of the rich man there can be no doubt that God is meant — God who, as we said a little before, cries out through Haggai: "Mine is the silver, and Mine is the gold" (Hag. 2). By the title "steward," or "manager" (oikonomos) as it reads in the Greek codices, must be understood the rich man, as the holy Fathers explain: St. John Chrysostom, quoted in St. Thomas's Catena Aurea; St. Augustine in his Evangelical Questions, book 2, question 34; St. Ambrose, Bede, Theophylact and Euthymius, and others on this passage of the holy Evangelist Luke.
Every rich man of this world, therefore, if he believes the Gospel, must confess that the riches he possesses, whether held by a just or an unjust title, are not his own; but that if he possesses them by a just title, he is a steward or manager for God, and if by an unjust title, a thief and a robber. Now that a rich man in this world is not the master of the riches he possesses can be understood from this: when he has been accused of injustice before God, God removes him from his stewardship, either by the death of the body or by want; for this is the meaning of those words: "Give an account of thy stewardship, for now thou canst be steward no longer." Nor does God lack many ways of reducing the rich to poverty and of thus removing them from the stewardship: shipwrecks, robberies, hailstorms, caterpillars, excessive rains, excessive droughts, excessive storms, and many other things of the kind are the voice of God, saying to the rich: "Thou shalt no longer be steward." But what the Lord says at the end of the parable — "Make unto you friends of the mammon of iniquity, that when you shall fail, they may receive you into everlasting dwellings" (Luke 16) — does not mean that alms are to be given out of unjust riches, but that alms are to be given out of riches which in truth are not riches, but only the shadows of riches. This is clearly gathered from the same passage of the Gospel according to Luke, where the Lord says: "If then you have not been faithful in the unjust mammon, who will trust you with that which is the true?" (Ibid.) The meaning of these words is this: "If in the unjust mammon" — that is, if in false riches — "you have not been faithful," so as to distribute them liberally to the poor, "who will trust you" with the riches that truly make a man rich? So St. Cyprian understood and explained this passage in his sermon On Works and Almsgiving; and St. Augustine expounded it in much the same way in book two, question thirty-four, of his Questions on the Gospel, where he says that the mammon of iniquity is riches which only the wicked and the foolish count as riches, while just and wise men esteem them as nothing, and hold spiritual gifts alone to be true riches. There is another passage of the Gospel in the same sixteenth chapter of St. Luke, which may be regarded as a commentary on the parable of the unjust steward. "There was a certain rich man," says the Lord, "who was clothed in purple and fine linen, and feasted sumptuously every day. And there was a certain beggar, named Lazarus, who lay at his gate, full of sores, desiring to be filled with the crumbs that fell from the rich man's table, and no one gave him any; but the dogs also came and licked his sores. And it came to pass that the beggar died, and was carried by the Angels into Abraham's bosom. And the rich man also died, and he was buried in hell" (Luke 16). This rich glutton was certainly one of those who suppose they are the masters of their own riches, and not stewards or managers for God; and therefore he did not think he sinned against God, when he was clothed in purple and fine linen, and feasted sumptuously every day, and kept his dogs and his buffoons, and the like. For he perhaps said within himself: "I am spending my own money; I do injury to no one; I do not violate the laws of God; I do not blaspheme, nor swear falsely; I keep the sabbath; I honor my parents; I do not kill, nor commit adultery, nor steal, nor bear false witness; nor do I covet my neighbor's wife or anything else that is his." But if that was so, why was he buried in hell? Why was he tormented in the fire? We must therefore acknowledge that all are deceived who suppose they are the absolute masters of their money; for if the rich man had committed other more grievous sins, Holy Scripture would certainly have mentioned them. But since nothing more is added, we are given to understand that the superfluous adornment of his body with costly garments, his daily splendid banquets, and the multitude of his servants and dogs, while he had no compassion on the poor, were cause enough for him to be condemned to eternal torments.
Let it therefore be a fixed rule for living well, and also for dying well, often to reflect upon, seriously to consider, and to turn over in the mind, that an account must be rendered to God for superfluous luxury in palaces, in gardens, in carriages, in the multitude of servants, in the costliness of garments, in banquets, in the heaping up of riches, and in other unnecessary expenses — by which a great injury is done to the multitude of the poor and the sick, who lack what others have in superfluity; and who without doubt cry out to God even now, and on the day of judgment will not cease to cry out, until they too, together with the rich glutton, are given over to inextinguishable flames.