"As the Bible says, there is nothing worse than the love of money (I Timothy 6:10), for it means that one's heart is everlastingly bothering about the love of the transitory and not giving itself a chance to acquire devotion. Love for God and love for the world cannot coexist in the same soul: the stronger drives out the weaker, and it soon appears who loves the world, and who follows Christ. The strength of people's love is shown in what they do.
Yet on the other hand, there are many who, because they care nothing for feminine beauty or riotous living, reckon therefore that they will be sure of salvation. Because of this chastity, outward and visible, they see themselves as saints standing out from the rest. But this is a wrong and silly assumption if they are not at the same time destroying the real root of sin, greed.
The devil may have the busy worker, or even the compelling preacher, but not, surely the person whose heart is aglow with charity, ever eager to love God and indifferent to vanity. The eager love of the wicked, on the other hand, is always for what is shameful. They have ceased from all spiritual exercises, or at least are flabby and feeble. Their love has no pattern, being given more to things that are of this world than of the next, more to bodies than to souls...Very often indeed are mortal wounds obscured by the odor of sanctity."
~Richard Rolle
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