Hope Not in Possessions

Cheerfulness consists in not regarding these things as our own, but as entrusted to us by God for the benefit of our fellow-servants.  It consists in scattering them abroad generously with joy and magnanimity, not reluctantly or under compulsion (II Cor.9:7ff).  Further, we ought cheerfully to empty ourselves of that which we stored up in the hope of the true promise God has made to us of giving us a hundredfold reward for this.  For since God knows that we are all wholly possessed by the lust for possessions and mad desire for wealth and how difficult it is for us to tear ourselves loose from them, and how those who in various ways have been deprived of them despair of life itself, he has made use of the corresponding remedy.  He has promised to give us, as we have said, a hundredfold reward for that which we spend on the poor.  This he has done, first, that we may be set free in this matter from the condemnation of covetousness, and second that we may cease to put our trust and hope in possessions and find our hearts set free from such bonds.

— Symeon the New Theologian (10th century)