118

If you want to be your own masters at all times, I advise you to make a very real effort to be detached from everything, and to do so without fear or hesitation. Then, when you go about your various duties, whether personal, family or otherwise, make honest use of upright human means with a view to serving God, his Church, your family, your profession, your country, and the whole of mankind. Remember that what really matters is not whether you have this or lack that, but whether you are living according to the truth taught us by our Christian faith, which tells us that created goods are only a means, nothing more. So, do not be beguiled into imagining that they are in any way definitive: 'Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where there is rust and moth to consume it, and where there are thieves to break in and steal it. Lay up treasure for yourselves in heaven, where there is no moth or rust to consume it, no thieves to break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart is too.

When a man tries to build his happiness exclusively around the things of this world, and in this I have witnessed some real tragedies, he perverts their proper use and destroys the order so wisely established by the Creator. As a consequence the heart is left sad and unsatisfied. It starts following paths which lead to everlasting unhappiness and it ends up, even in this world, a slave, the victim of the very same goods which had perhaps been gained at the cost of countless efforts and renunciations. But, above all, I recommend you never to forget that God cannot find a place, that he cannot dwell in a heart which is bogged down by a coarse, disorderly and empty love. 'No man can serve two masters; either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will devote himself to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.' 'Let us then anchor our hearts in a love that can make us happy… Let us desire the treasures of heaven.'

References to Holy Scripture
This point in another language