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Illustration: The Great Day of His Wrath, by John Martin (1789–1854)
Pope Francis’ Cycle of Catechesis. Vices and Virtues. 6. Anger
Paul VI Audience Hall – Wednesday, 31 January 2024
Ephesians (4:26-32)
26 Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, 27 and give no opportunity to the devil. 28 Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his hands, so that he may be able to give to those in need. 29 Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for edifying, as fits the occasion, that it may impart grace to those who hear. 30 And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, in whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. 31 Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, with all malice, 32 and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.
‘We must distinguish between holy indignation and anger’
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
Today we will pause to reflect on the vice of anger.
Now we are talking about vices and virtues: today it is time to reflect on the vice of anger.
It is a particularly dark vice, and it is perhaps the easiest to detect from a physical point of view.
It is difficult for a person dominated by anger to hide this impulse: it can be seen in the movements of his body, in his aggressiveness, in his laboured breathing, in his grim and frowning expression.
In its most acute form, anger is a vice that knows no respite. When it is born of an injustice suffered (or believed to have been suffered), it is often unleashed, not against the offender, but against the first unfortunate victim.
There are men who keep their rage in check in the workplace, appearing calm and composed, but at home they become unbearable to the wife and children.
Anger is a pervasive vice: it is capable of depriving us of sleep, of barring the way to reason and thought.
Anger is a vice that destroys human relationships.
It expresses the incapacity to accept the diversity of others, especially when their life choices differ from our own. It does not stop at the wrongdoing of one person but throws everything into the cauldron.
It is the other person, the other as he or she is, the other as such, who provokes anger and resentment. One begins to hate the tone of his voice, his trivial everyday gestures, his ways of thinking and feeling.
When the relationship reaches this level of degeneration, clarity is lost.
Anger makes us lose clarity, doesn’t it?
Because one of the characteristics of anger, at times, is that sometimes it does not abate with time.
In these cases, even distance and silence, instead of easing the burden of error, increases it.
For this reason, the Apostle Paul – as we have heard – recommends to Christians to face the problem immediately, and to week reconciliation: “Do not let the sun go down on your anger” (Eph4:26).
It is important that everything be resolved immediately, before the sun sets!
If, during the day, a misunderstanding occurs and two people cannot understand each other because they feel far apart, the night cannot be left to the devil.
The vice would keep us awake at night, brooding over our reasons and the inexplicable mistakes that are never ours and always the other’s.
It is like this: when a person is angry, he always say that the other person is the problem. He is never able to see his own faults, his own shortcomings.
In the Our Father, Jesus asks us to pray for our human relationships, which are a minefield: a plane that is never in perfect equilibrium. In life, we have to deal with intruders who are in fault with us, just as we have never loved everyone to the right measure. To some we have not returned the love that was due to them. We are all sinners, all of us, and we all have accounts to settle: do not forget this.
We are all indebted, we all have accounts to settle, and therefore we all need to learn how to forgive so as to be forgiven. People do not stay together unless they also practice the art of forgiveness, as much as is humanly possible. Anger is countered by benevolence, openness of heart, gentleness and patience.
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But there is one last thing to say about anger.
It is a terrible vice, it has been said, that it is at the origin of wars and violence.
The Proem of the Iliad describes the anger of Achilles, which will be the cause of “infinite suffering”.
But not everything that comes from anger is wrong.
The ancients understood well that there exists an irascible part of us that cannot and must not be denied.
Passions are to some extent unconscious: they happen, they are life experiences.
We are not responsible for the onset of anger, but we are always responsible for its development.
Sometimes it is good for anger to be vented in the right way.
If a person never felt anger, if a person never felt indignation at an injustice, if a person never felt a quiver in the belly, it would mean that the person was not human, must less a Christian.
There is a Holy indignation, which is not anger, but an inner movement, a holy indignation.
Jesus knew it several times in His life (cf. Mk3.5 – he looked around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart, and said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out, and his hand was restored):
He never responded to evil with evil, but in His soul,
He felt this emotion, and in the case of the merchants in the temple, He performed a strong and prophetic action, not dictated by anger, but by zeal for the house of the Lord (cf. Mt 21:12-13 – 2 And Jesus entered the temple of God[a] and drove out all who sold and bought in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons. 13 He said to them, “It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer’; but you make it a den of robbers.”).
We must distinguish well: zeal, holy indignation, is one thing; anger, which is bad, is another.
It is up to us, with the help of the Holy Spirit, to find the right measure for our passions.
To educate them well so that they turn to good and not to evil. Thank you.
Summary of the Holy Father’s words
Dear Brothers and Sisters: in our catechesis on the virtues and vices, we now consider “anger”, the uncontrolled rage that may well begin with brooding over insults received, but which ends up being self-destructive and damaging to our relationships with others, leading ultimately to violence and even war.
Jesus teaches us to forgive those who sin against us, while St. Paul urges us never to let the sun set on our anger. Yet there is a proper kind of anger, which consists in righteous indignation against evil and injustice. As with all the passions, so too with anger: it is up to us, with the sustaining grace of the Holy Spirit, to control and direct our emotions in order to serve God’s kingdom of reconciliation, justice and peace.
