Sin of anger
“Whosoever is angry with his brother shall be in danger of the judgment.”—Matthew 5:22
Anger resembles fire. As fire is violent in its action and, by the smoke it sends up, blocks the sight, so anger makes a man burst out into a thousand excesses and keeps him from seeing what he is doing, and in this way makes him guilty of the judgment of eternal death: “Whosoever is angry with his brother shall be in danger of the judgment.” Anger is so ruinous to a man that it disfigures even his outward appearance. However handsome and gracious a person may be, the moment he gives way to anger he looks like a monster, a wild beast that strikes terror.
St. Basil says: Iracundus humanam quasi figuram amittit ferae speciem indutus—“The angry man loses his human form and puts on the appearance of a wild beast” (Hom. 21). But if anger disfigures us before men, how much more deformed will it make us in the eyes of God! In this discourse I will show, in the first point, the ruin that unrestrained anger brings on the soul; and in the second, how we ought to restrain anger on the occasions of provocation that come to us.
First Point.—The ruin which unrestrained anger brings on the soul.
1. St. Jerome says that anger is the door by which all vices enter the soul: Omnium vitiorum janua est iracundia—“Anger is the gateway of all vices” (Prov. 29). Anger casts a man headlong into acts of revenge, blasphemies, injustices, detractions, scandals, and other iniquities; for the passion of anger darkens the reason and makes a man act like a beast and a madman: Caligavit ab indignatione oculus meus—“My eye has grown dim with indignation” (Job 17:7). My eye, said Job, has lost its sight through wrath. David said the same: “My eye is troubled with wrath” (Ps. 31:10).
Hence St. Bonaventure writes that an angry man acts blindly and can no longer see what is just and what is unjust: Iratus non potest videre quod justum est vel injustum—“The angry man cannot see what is just or unjust.” In a word, St. Jerome says that anger robs a man of prudence, reason, and good sense: Ab omni consilio deturpat, ut donec irascitur, insanire credatur—“It strips him of all counsel, so that while he is angry he is believed to be insane.” This is why St. James says: “The anger of man worketh not the justice of God” (Jas. 1:20). The works of a man seized by anger cannot be conformed to the divine justice, and therefore cannot be free from fault.
2. When a man is seized by anger and does not try to restrain it, he easily falls into hatred of the person who has been the occasion of his anger. According to St. Augustine, hatred is nothing else than anger that persists: Odium est ira diuturno tempore perseverans—“Hatred is anger persisting for a long time.” Hence St. Thomas wrote: “Anger is sudden, but hatred is lasting” (Opusculum 5). In him, then, in whom anger persists, it is a sign that hatred also reigns.
But you will say: I am the head of the house; I must correct my children and servants, and raise my voice when necessary against the disorders I see. I answer: it is one thing to be angry against a brother, and another to be angry against a brother’s sin. To be angry against sin is not really anger, but zeal; and so it is not only lawful, but at times even necessary—provided it is done with due prudence, so that we show we are angry against the sin and not against the sinner. For if the person we correct sees that we speak out of passion and out of hatred toward him, the correction will bear no fruit, and will even do more harm. To be angry, then, against a brother’s sin is certainly lawful, as St. Augustine says: “He is not angry with a brother who is angry against a brother’s sin.” This, properly, is to be angry without sin, as David said: “Be ye angry, and sin not” (Ps. 4:5). But it is another thing to be angry against a brother for the sin he has committed; this is never lawful, because, as the same St. Augustine says, we may not hate others for their vices: Nec propter vitia (licet) homines odisse—“It is not permitted to hate men on account of their vices” (Ps. 118).
3. Hatred then easily draws revenge after it; and so St. Thomas wrote that anger—when, that is, it is fully voluntary—is joined with the desire of revenge: Ira est appetitus vindictae—“Anger is the appetite for revenge.” But you will say: if I take revenge on such a man, God will have pity on me, because I have only too good reason. Who, I ask, has told you that you have too good reason? You say so, you who are clouded by anger. But I have already told you that anger darkens the mind and takes away reason and good sense. While you are in the heat of anger, that act of your neighbor will seem to you an injury too great and unbearable; but when your anger has passed, you will see that it was not so grave as you had judged it.
But suppose the injury is grave, even very grave: why do you suppose that God will have pity on you if you take revenge? No, says God: vengeance for sins is not yours to take, but mine; and when the time comes, I will know well how to punish offenses as they deserve. “Revenge is mine, and I will repay them in due time” (Deut. 32:35). You want to avenge the injury your neighbor has done you? Then God will justly want to avenge himself for the many injuries you have done him, and especially for this one, when the Lord commands you to forgive. “He that seeketh to revenge himself, shall find vengeance from the Lord… Man to man reserveth anger, and doth he seek remedy of God?… He that is but flesh nourisheth anger; and doth he ask of God forgiveness of his sins? Who shall obtain pardon for them?” (Ecclus. 28:1, 3, 5).
A man, a worm of flesh, keeps up his anger to avenge himself on a brother, and then has the boldness to ask mercy of God? And who, adds the sacred writer, will ever be able to pray for the sins of so reckless a man? Qua fronte—“With what face,” says St. Augustine, indulgentiam peccatorum obtinere poterit, qui praecipienti dare veniam non acquiescit—“can the sinner obtain forgiveness of his sins, who will not obey the command to grant pardon?” With what face can he ever hope to obtain from God the pardon of his own sins, who will not obey God’s command to pardon his neighbor?
4. Let us pray the Lord to free us from being seized by any strong passion, and especially by anger: “Give me not over to a shameless and foolish mind” (Ecclus. 23:6). For then it will be hard not to fall into some grievous sin, either against our neighbor or against God. How many, for failing to restrain their anger, break out into horrible blasphemies against God or against his saints!
But at the very moment we are inflamed with indignation, God is arming his hand with scourges. Jeremiah writes that one day the Lord asked him: “What seest thou, Jeremiah? And I said: I see a rod watching” (Jer. 1:11). Lord, I see a rod that is watching to punish. Then God questioned him again: “What seest thou? And I said: I see a boiling caldron” (Jer. 1:13). I see, he answered, a caldron that boils. Here, figured by this caldron, is a person inflamed with anger, over whom hangs the rod—that is, the vengeance of God. Behold, then, the ruin that unrestrained anger brings upon a man. First it will make him lose the grace of God, and then his temporal life as well, as Ecclesiasticus says: “Envy and anger shorten a man’s days” (Ecclus. 30:26). And Job said: “Anger indeed killeth the foolish” (Job 5:2). And all the days they live, these angry men lead an unhappy life, always in a storm. But let us pass to the second point, where I have many useful things left to say for the remedy of this vice.
Second Point.—How we ought to restrain anger on the occasions of provocation which come to us.
5. First of all, we must understand that it is not possible for human weakness, amid so many changing circumstances, never to feel some movement of anger in the soul. From anger, as Seneca says, no one can be entirely exempt: Iracundia nullum genus hominum excipit—“Anger excepts no class of men” (Bk. 3, ch. 12). All our care must go to moderating anger once it has gained some entrance into us. And how is anger moderated? By meekness. The virtue of meekness is called the virtue of the lamb—that is, the beloved virtue of Jesus Christ.
For like a lamb, without growing angry and without even complaining, he bore his passion and was sacrificed on the cross: “He shall be led as a sheep to the slaughter, and shall be dumb as a lamb before his shearer, and he shall not open his mouth” (Isa. 53:7). And so he left this commended to us: to learn of him to be meek and humble of heart: “Learn of me, because I am meek and humble of heart” (Matt. 11:29).
6. Oh, how pleasing to God is a meek man, who bears adversity, misfortunes, persecutions, and injuries in peace! To the meek the kingdom of heaven is promised: “Blessed are the meek, for they shall possess the land” (Matt. 5:4). They are called the children of God: “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God” (Matt. 5:9).
Some boast of being meek, but falsely; for they are meek with those who do them favors or praise them, but with those who injure them or do them some harm they are all fury and revenge. No—the virtue consists in being meek and peaceable with those who maltreat us and hate us: “With them that hated peace I was peaceable” (Ps. 120:7).
7. We must, as St. Paul says, put on bowels of mercy toward every neighbor, bearing with one another. “Put on… the bowels of mercy, humility, modesty, patience, bearing with one another, and forgiving one another, if any have a complaint against another” (Col. 3:12–13). You want others to bear with you in the defect you have; and if others have some reason to complain of you, you want them to overlook it. You should do the same toward others.
Whenever, then, you meet some affront from a person who is angry with you, remember that “a mild answer breaketh wrath” (Prov. 15:1). A certain monk, passing through a sown field, was met by the farmer, who loaded him with many insults. The monk humbly answered: Brother, you are right; I have done wrong; pardon me. And at this answer the farmer was so softened that not only did all his anger pass, but he even wished to follow the monk and become a monk together with him. The proud turn the humiliations they receive into an increase of their pride; but the humble and the meek turn the contempt offered them into an increase of their humility. So St. Bernard says: “He is humble who turns humiliation into humility” (Sermon 24 on the Canticles).
8. St. Chrysostom writes: “A meek man is useful to himself and to others.” The meek man is useful to himself, for, as Father Alvarez used to say, the time when one receives contempt is the time of merit. And so Jesus called his disciples blessed for the time when they should be cursed and persecuted: “Blessed are ye when they shall revile you and persecute you” (Matt. 5:11). Hence the desire of the saints has always been to be despised, as Jesus Christ was despised.
The meek man is useful to others as well, for, as the same St. Chrysostom says, there is nothing that draws others to give themselves to God so much as to see a Christian meek and cheerful in receiving injuries: Nihil ita conciliat Domino familiares ut quod illum vident mansuetudine jucundum—“Nothing so wins men to the Lord as to see them joyful in meekness.” The reason is that virtue is known by being tested; and as gold is tested by fire, so the meekness of men is tested by humiliations: “Gold and silver are tried in the fire, but acceptable men in the furnace of humiliation” (Ecclus. 2:5).
It is said in the sacred Canticles: “My spikenard sent forth the odor thereof” (Cant. 1:12). The spikenard is a fragrant herb, but it gives off its odor only when it is rubbed and crushed. This signifies that a man cannot be called meek unless experience shows that, on receiving injuries and ill treatment, he sends forth the odor of his meekness by bearing them in peace, without anger. God wishes us to be meek even toward ourselves. When a person commits some fault, the Lord indeed wishes him to humble himself, to be sorry for it, and to resolve not to commit it again; but he does not wish him to grow angry with himself and remain disturbed; for a man who is troubled is, at that time, in no fit state to do good: “My heart is troubled, my strength hath left me” (Ps. 38:11).
9. And so, when we receive affronts, we must force ourselves to restrain anger: either answer at once with mildness, as has been said above, or at least shut our mouth and not speak; and thus we shall conquer, as St. Isidore wrote: Quamvis quis irritet, tu dissimula, quia tacendo vinces—“Although someone provokes you, take no notice, because by keeping silent you will conquer.” Otherwise, by answering in anger, you will do harm to yourself and to others.
And it would be worse still to answer with anger one who corrects you. St. Bernard says: Medicanti irascitur—“He is angry with the physician,” qui non irascitur sagittanti—“who is not angry with the one who shoots the arrow” (Sermon 6 on the Nativity). Some do not grow angry—though they have every reason to—with those who wound their souls by flattering them; and then they grow angry with those who reprove them in order to heal their disorders. Against those who abhor correction the sentence of their perdition has been pronounced, as the Wise Man says: “Because they have despised all my reproofs… the prosperity of fools shall destroy them” (Prov. 1:30–32). It says the prosperity of fools: fools count it prosperity to have no one to correct them, or to take no account of the corrections given them; but such prosperity is the cause of their ruin.
When the occasion of anger comes, then, you must first of all be on guard to keep anger from entering: “Be not quickly angry” (Eccles. 7:10). Some, on feeling some little sting, at once change color and fly into a passion; and once anger has entered, God knows where it will lead them. This is why it is necessary, in our prayers, to prepare ourselves for these occasions; for it will be hard afterward, when we are not ready for them, to restrain anger—as hard as to put a bridle on a horse that is already running.
10. And when by misfortune anger has already entered us, let us take care not to let it rest in us. Jesus Christ said that if anyone remembers that a brother is displeased with him, he should not offer at the altar the gift he was bringing until he has first been reconciled with that brother: “Go first to be reconciled to thy brother, and then coming thou shalt offer thy gift” (Matt. 5:24). And he who has been offended must try to tear out of his heart not only all resentment, but all bitterness toward the one who has offended him, as St. Paul says: “Let all bitterness, and anger, and indignation… be put away from you” (Eph. 4:31).
And while anger still lasts, follow the counsel of Seneca: “When you are angry, do nothing and say nothing dictated by anger.” When a man sees that he is disturbed, let him be silent and not speak, as David did: “I was troubled, and I spoke not” (Ps. 77:5). How many find that, after doing or saying something while their anger was boiling, they repent of it once the fire is quenched, and say: I was in a passion then. In anger, then, we must be silent and do nothing—do nothing and resolve nothing; for whatever is done in the boiling of anger will be unjust, according to the maxim of St. James: “The anger of man worketh not the justice of God” (Jas. 1:20).
And at that time we must be careful not to take counsel with anyone who may feed our indignation: “Blessed,” wrote David, “is the man who hath not walked in the counsel of the ungodly” (Ps. 1:1). And Ecclesiasticus warns the man who is asked for advice: “If thou blow the spark, it shall burn as a fire; and if thou spit upon it, it shall be quenched” (Ecclus. 28:14). When a person is stung by some wrong he has received, with a good counsel of patience you can quench the fire; but with one breath of revenge you can kindle a great flame. And so let anyone who is somewhat inflamed with anger beware of any false friend who, by a single imprudent word, may bring about his ruin.
11. Let us follow the counsel of the Apostle, who says: “Be not overcome by evil, but overcome evil by good” (Rom. 12:21). “Be not overcome by evil”: do not let yourself be conquered by sin. If through anger you take revenge or blaspheme, you are conquered by sin. But you say: I am of a fiery nature. Yet by the grace of God, and by forcing yourself, you can conquer your bad disposition. Be not—do not be willing to grow angry, and you will master your fiery nature. But you say: I cannot bear crooked dealing. I answer: first, take note that anger dazzles the sight and keeps us from seeing things as they are: “Fire hath fallen on them, and they shall not see the sun” (Ps. 58:9). Second, if you try to return evil for evil to your enemy, you will be conquered and lost by your enemy: “If,” said David, “I have rendered to them that repaid me evils, let me deservedly fall empty before my enemies” (Ps. 7:5). If I render evil for evil, I shall be struck down by my enemies.
“Overcome evil by good”: render them good for evil, as Jesus Christ says: “Do good to them that hate you” (Matt. 5:44). This is that revenge of the saints which St. Paulinus calls a heavenly revenge; and thus you will come off the victor. And when one of those of whom the prophet speaks—“The venom of asps is under their lips” (Ps. 140:4)—should say to you: How can you swallow such an injury? answer him: “The chalice which my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it?” (John 18:11). And then, turning to God, you will say to him: “I opened not my mouth, because thou hast done it” (Ps. 39:10); for it is certain that every trial that comes to us comes from God: “Good things and evil… are from God” (Ecclus. 11:14).
And when someone takes what is yours, recover it if you can; but if not, say as Job said: “The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away” (Job 1:21). A certain philosopher, having lost his goods in a storm at sea, said: If I have lost my goods, I will not lose my peace. And you, say: If I have lost my goods, I will not lose my soul.
12. In a word, when adversities, persecutions, and injuries come to us, let us cast a glance at God, who in such cases commands us to be patient; and so we shall avoid growing angry: “Remember the fear of God, and be not angry with thy neighbor” (Ecclus. 28:8). Let us cast a glance at the will of God, who so disposes things for our merit, and our indignation will cease. Let us cast a glance at Jesus crucified, and we shall not have the heart to complain.
St. Eleazar the king was asked by his wife how he managed to receive so many injuries without growing angry. I turn, he answered, to Jesus crucified, and so I grow calm. Let us, finally, cast a glance at our own sins, for which we have deserved still greater contempt and chastisements, and we shall bear everything in peace. St. Augustine says that, although we are sometimes innocent of the fault for which we are persecuted, we are nevertheless guilty of other sins that deserve a greater punishment than the one that afflicts us: Esto non habemus peccatum, quod objicitur: habemus tamen, quod digne in nobis flagelletur—“Even if we do not have the sin that is charged against us, we nevertheless have one that may justly be scourged in us” (Ps. 68).
Points for Reflection
1. “When we receive affronts, we must force ourselves to restrain anger: let us either answer at once with mildness, as has been said above, or at least shut our mouth and not speak; and thus we shall conquer” (§9)
2. “While anger still lasts, when a man sees that he is disturbed, let him be silent and not speak. How many find that, after doing or saying something while their anger was boiling, they repent of it once the fire is quenched” (§10)
3. “When adversities, persecutions, and injuries come to us, let us cast a glance at God, who in such cases commands us to be patient; and so we shall avoid growing angry. Let us cast a glance at Jesus crucified, and we shall not have the heart to complain” (§12)