If You Are Angry
Catechism of the Catholic Church. (Page 544.)
"You have heard that it was said to the men of old, 'You shall not kill: and whoever kills shall be liable to judgment.' But I say unto you that every one who is angry with his brother shall be liable to judgment." (Mat 5:21-22).
"I wonder why God lets a man like that live?" The speaker was referring to a neighbor whose viciousness was bringing heartbreak to his family and fury to all with whom he came in contact. The answer to the question is of course that God lets this man live for the same reason that He lets any of us live: in order that he (and we) may have a chance for eternal life. As long as breath remains, there always is the hope that God's insistent grace may, even at the last moment, find entrance into the hard and perverse heart.
If God were to liquidate all criminals and sinners at the very onset of their first evil act, there would have been no St. Dismas, no St. Mary Magdalen, no St. Matthew, no St. Augustine. In fact our earth would be a lone place indeed, and heaven quite depopulated. Would I myself be alive today? Maybe my sins and crimes are not the kind of stuff that newspaper stories are made of, yet there is no one but God who can draw a line and say where little evils leave off and the big ones begin. It well may be that my many little unkindnesses will be uglier, in the final judging, than some cruelties of others.
Medical opinion says that if you are angry it is better to release your anger than to keep it bottled up. Go ahead and shout and rant. Get it out of your system. If you repress it, your anger may damage your heart, cause ulcers, or find some other harmful outlet. So let yourself pop; it will be a good prophylaxis. On the other hand God tells us that willful anger is a sin: "Anger and fury are both of them abominable, and the sinful man shall be subject to them" (Ecl. 27:33). Here then is our dilemma; the doctors tell us to give vent to our anger, Jesus tells us that anger is a sin. Whom shall we believe?
If we had to make a choice between the two, we know well enough whom we should believe, As it happens however there is no real dilemma. The doctors are right; bottled-up anger can do us a lot of physical and mental harm. But Jesus isn't asking us to bottle up our anger; bottled-up anger still could be a sin. Jesus is telling us not to get angry; or, if we feel the stirring of anger, to dissolve the anger quickly.
Why do we get angry, anyway? We get angry because we have been in some way frustrated and we can't stand frustration. It may be that our pride has been hurt, or our self-esteem. It may be that some cherished plan has been upset, or that our convenience has been interfered with, or that our wisdom has been questioned or our "rights" ignored ("Why wasn't I consulted?") Jesus has given us the remedy: to hate the sin but to love the sinner. Spelled out that means that when someone does us an injustice, or by thoughtlessness or stupidity hurts us, we say to ourselves,
"Poor man (or woman) he must be a pretty unhappy person. He is hurting himself more than he is hurting me. He must get into lots of arguments with that meanness (or thoughtlessness or stupidity). I will say a prayer for him that God may give him the grace to change. Meanwhile I will keep my head cool. Getting angry is not going to put the pieces back together.
That kind of reasoning does not bottle up the anger; it evaporates the anger before our temper slides out of control. It is hard for some persons to realize that anger is a weakness. The angry man has abandoned control of himself. This weakness we can conquer with the grace which God will give us if we ask for it. Getting angry will accomplish nothing. And the whole thing is not that important anyway. In the light of eternity what difference will it make? "I am going to be boss of myself and of my own emotions." When, with prayer and with effort, we have achieved this kind of attitude - then we shall be master of ourselves, with no ulcer in our future.
Source: Fr. L. Trese (More than many sparrows.)