"A Christian who is attached to material things," writes St. Ephraim the Syrian, "is like a hawk flying with straps on his legs; wherever he sits, he will immediately become entangled. And he who is not tied to material things is the same as a traveler who is always ready for a journey."

This passion, which has reached the point of miserliness, is positively insatiable: no matter how much a person acquires, everything seems to him to be insufficient, and concern for earthly, material, and gain constantly distracts his thought from heaven and from God. Mammon is perhaps the lowest and coarsest idol before which people bow: it stands as a permanent wall between man and God, does not allow works of mercy and love for one's neighbor, eradicates from the soul all higher, noble feelings, making it coarse and inhuman. There seems to be no crime in the world that has not been committed for the sake of the passion for wealth.

About this idol the Lord directly says: "You cannot live for God and mammon" (Matt. VI, 24), and the terrible truth of these words was justified in one of His close disciples, Judas, who betrayed his Teacher for thirty pieces of silver.

In the biography of Blessed Andrew, the fool-for-Christ, who lived in the tenth century in Constantinople, there is the following story.

Coming once to the market, Saint Andrew met a certain monk, whom everyone praised for his virtuous life. True, he asceticized as befits monks, but he was inclined to the love of money. Many of the inhabitants of the city, confessing their sins to him, gave him gold to distribute to the poor. He did not give to anyone, but put everything in a bag and rejoiced to see how his wealth increased. And then Blessed Andrew saw with clairvoyant eyes that around the lover of money in the air was written in dark letters: "The root of all iniquity is the serpent of the love of money."

Looking back, the saint noticed two youths arguing with each other – one of them was black and had dark eyes. The other, God's angel, was white as the light of heaven.

Cherny said:

- The monk is mine, since he fulfills my will. He is merciless and has no part with God, he works for me like an idolater.

"No, he is mine," the angel objected, "for he fasts and prays, and moreover he is meek and humble.

Thus they disputed, and there was no agreement between them. And there was a voice from heaven to the light-bearing angel:

"You have no part in that black, leave him, because he does not work for God, but for mammon."

After this, the angel of the Lord departed from him, and the spirit of darkness received power over him. Meeting the monk afterwards in the street, the saint took him by the right hand and said:

"Servant of God, listen to me, thy servant, without irritation, and graciously accept my wretched words. I can no longer bear that you, who were at first a friend of God, now become a servant and friend of the devil. You were the sun, but you went into a dark and calamitous night. While others are dying of hunger, cold, and thirst, you rejoice at the abundance of gold. I beseech you: distribute your possessions to the poor, to the orphans. Try to be a friend of God again.

The third vice that the Lord notes in the scribes is hypocrisy. Hypocrisy is rarely found in its pure form. Hypocrisy just to be a hypocrite makes no sense. Hypocrisy is usually only a mask to cover up some inner vice, with which it is most often associated. For the scribes and Pharisees, it covered up their vanity and greed. Praying earnestly and for a long time for show to people, they, of course, did not think about pleasing God, but about people considering them righteous and pious. Thus, this mask of outward piety was worn for the specific purpose of deceiving others. "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites," the Saviour rebukes them, "for you are likened to painted sepulchers, which outwardly seem beautiful, but inwardly are full of the bones of the dead and all kinds of uncleanness; so you also outwardly appear righteous to men, but inwardly you are full of hypocrisy and iniquity (Matt. XXIII, 27-28).