Since humans are the trustees and administrators of the wealth that God places in their hands, a strict accounting will be demanded of them regarding the use they have made of it in virtue of their free will. A bad use consists in using it solely for their personal satisfaction; a good use, on the other hand, consists in all the times that it results in some good for someone else. The merit is in proportion to the sacrifice one imposes on oneself. Beneficence is only one way of employing wealth: it relieves misery, appeases hunger, saves from the cold and provides shelter to those who lack it. However, an equally pressing and meritorious obligation consists in preventing misery from occurring in the first place. It is there, principally, where the mission of the great fortunes lies, a mission to assist in all sorts of projects which such fortunes can help to execute. Were such projects to provide a legitimate profit, good would come of it nonetheless because labor develops the mind and exalts the dignity of people, who are always proud to be able to say that they have earned the bread they eat, whereas the receiving of alms humiliates and degrades them. Wealth concentrated in only one hand should be like a fount of living water that spreads fertility and well-being all around it. O you wealthy who employ your riches according to the designs of the Lord, your heart will be the first to quench its thirst at that beneficent fount. In this very lifetime you will enjoy the ineffable delights of the soul instead of the material delights of selfishness, which leave a void in the heart. Your name will be blessed on the earth, and when you depart it, the sovereign Lord will say to you as in the parable of the talents, “O good and faithful servant, enter into the joy of your Master.” In this parable, is not the servant who buried in the ground the money that had been entrusted to him the image of the greedy, in whose hands wealth remains unproductive?  If Jesus speaks primarily of alms, it is because at the time and in the land in which he was living, one did not know about the work that the arts and industry would create later, and in which wealth could be usefully employed for the overall good of society. To all those who can give little or much I will say: Give alms when necessary, but as much as possible, convert them into wages so that those who receive them will not feel ashamed.

Fenelon (Alger, 1860)