On the first day of Great Lent, the head...
"The life approach of a proud person entails many dangerous consequences, one of which is the vice of envy," Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia said Monday after an evening service in downtown Moscow"s Christ the Savior Cathedral attended by over 3,000 people.
"If other vices are accompanied by a seeming pleasuring, then envy always means anguish," he said, adding that an envious person becomes aggressive and that the first murder on Earth was committed by Cain out of envy.
The Book of Genesis says that Adam"s son Cain killed his brother Abel after God did not show respect for Cain"s offering but accepted Abel"s. "And Cain was very wroth, and his countenance fell... and it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother, and slew him." (Genesis, 4:5,8)
Patriarch Kirill advised envious people to do good deeds. "Try to do a good deed to a person you envy, and envy will gradually abandon you," he said.