All the passions of the soul and the sins that arise from them constitute an unnatural state of man who was created in the image of God. According to the God-bearing Fathers, "virtue is the natural health of the soul, therefore passions are its disease. They appeared afterwards, and as they entered the nature of man, they caused him to lose the health he had."

All passions are destructive to the soul, but the most destructive of them is envy. It is in a way the first passion, because the original sins are born of envy: the fall of Lucifer, the original sin, the murder of Abel. It is a passion that is born from the soul and then consumes it. And while in all passions the person who experiences them tastes, even momentarily, a relative pleasure, envy melts the soul with a permanent sorrow for the happiness of the fellow man. He "rejoices" only in his destruction elsewhere.

This passion is usually well hidden. We must examine our souls to notice that we often do not rejoice in another's joy, and that when he advances or is praised in us something disturbs us.

Many times we still notice that as soon as a good project or a good effort begins, obstacles and temptations immediately appear. Often even from where we least expect it. And we wonder why this should happen, we may even be disappointed, until we realize that these obstacles are the fruit of envy, which comes either from the Devil or from people.

In this issue we will try to examine what envy is, what its harmful consequences are and how to deal with it.

(From the preface of the publication)