Homily 13 July 2003 By Fr. Hathaway FSSP Mater Dei Latin Mass Community
Fifth Sunday after Pentecost On Anger
“But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother shall be
liable to judgment.”
+
Our Lord did not come abolish the Law of Moses, but to fulfill it; in
modern lingo, Christ gave the Old Law an upgrade. The 5th Commandment,
“Thou shall not murder,” was given to Moses, taught by the Scribes (doctors
of the law), and legislated by the Pharisees (sect who made precisions on
the law); “But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother shall
be liable to judgment,” is its fulfilment.
Today, we will speak on the nature of anger and provide remedies against
the sin of anger.
Anger is one of eleven passions (emotions). It is the particular
response to some pain that is suffered. ‘A driver cuts me off in traffic,
my honor is wounded, and so, to get even, I tailgate or curse him’; ‘my husband
criticizes my care of the house, so now I will burn his dinner.’ The
emotion of anger has two components: the element of taking offense; the
element of taking revenge.
St. Thomas Aquinas describes the passion of anger: Someone does or says
something, or perhaps fails to do or say something, at which act of commission
or omission we take offense because we interpret it as an offense against
our honor. We feel victimized - “we deserve better” - and now we demand
justice and are not satisfied until justice is served. For the sake
of justice, then, we seek to avenge the hurt that was done to us.
When and if we succeed in doing so our anger disappears. (McInerny, Thomistic
Ethics).
St. Thomas also explains that the passion of anger contains two contrary
passions, namely, sorrow and hope. Recall that sorrow is the response
to the absence of our good (presence of evil); hope is the response towards
a good not yet possessed. When a man suffers an affront, his personal
good is adversely affected. This hurt deprives him of his good, and
constitutes an evil; on account of this evil, the man experiences sorrow.
On the other hand, this angry man becomes resolved to amend the wrong - he
is determined to obtain justice; on account of this future good then, the
man experiences hope. This is how the contrary passions of sorrow and
hope behave within the passion of anger.
St. Thomas writes, “Anger regards one of its objects under the aspect
of good, that is to say, the vengeance that is sought; and it regards another
under the aspect of evil, namely, the offense to honor, concerning which
it seeks to be revenged. And in this way, the passion is in a sense
made up of contrary passions.” (I-II, q.46, a.2)
Moreover, the Universal Doctor, tells us there is an aspect of pleasure
in anger, “Someone who is in the state of anger,” St. Thomas says,
“thinks a great deal about revenge, and he derives considerable pleasure
from these thoughts.” ‘I will get even, I will put a snail in his shoe
- no, I will put two snails there... ha, ha,’ Thus, pleasure to “get
even” urges the angry man on.
The passage of time dissolves our anger. What before I believed
was a huge assault against my honor is now pardoned by the wave of the hand
and the comment, “Oh, don’t worry, it was nothing.” Time also cools
anger as, eventually, ‘getting even’ becomes too much trouble and not worth
the effort.
In today’s Gospel, does our Lord condemn all anger? Does He
condemn anger absolutely? Read carefully. “Every one who is angry
with his brother.”
As St. Alphonsus Liguori says, “it is one thing to be angry against thy
brother, and another to be displeased at the sin of a brother. To
be angry against sin is not anger, but zeal; and, therefore, not only lawful,
but it is sometimes a duty. But our anger must be accompanied by
prudence, and must appear to be directed against sin, and not against the
sinner; for, if the person whom we correct perceives that we speak through
passion and hatred towards him, the correction will be unprofitable and
even malicious. To be angry then against a brother’s sin is certainly
lawful. St. Augustine says, “He is not angry with a brother, who is
angry against a brother’s sin.”
Let us be sure to be angry at the right thing. Only sin, whether
in us or in another, deserves our anger; sin alone must we hate. That
is the meaning of, “Be angry and sin not.” (Ps 4:5, Eph 4:26)
To combat sinful anger, anger against our brother, we must practice meekness.
Meekness is the virtue which restrains our anger. More pointedly, St.
Alphonsus says, the virtue of meekness consists in being meek and peaceful
towards those who hate and mistreat us. St. Alphonsus records how a
monk was once caught trespassing in a cornfield and received all manner of
abuse. In response he said, “Brother you are right, I have done wrong,
please pardon me.” This meekness won the landowner over so that he
too embarked upon the religious life. And here we see the application
of the Proverb, “Kindness breaks wrath.”
But we will never become meek unless we too practice meekness. St.
Alphonsus lists several ways to nurture the virtue of meekness.
First, we must consider that anger obscures our reason and prevents us
from seeing the truth. We are so weak that even a slight criticism, or misheard
word, is too often taken wrongly and we are quick to believe ourselves abused
and unjustly offended. But even when we have truly been mistreated,
as long as our anger lasts, we must keep silent and refrain from doing anything
which may stir our anger. We must remind ourselves that acting through
passion is always unprofitable, as St. James writes, “The anger of man works
not the justice of God.” (Jm 1:20) Further, in our angry state,
we must also avoid those who will foment our anger, according to the Psalm
1:1, “Blessed is the man who has not walked in the counsel of the ungodly.”
Second, we must consider that ‘if I return evil for evil, my enemy will
have prevailed over me. My Lord commands me, “Do good to them that
hate you.” (Mt 5:44); anything else is from the devil - and him, I do not
wish to serve.’ So should anyone take our property, we may recover
it if we can; but if we cannot, we must say with holy Job, “The Lord gave
and He has taken away.” Or if, through some misfortune, we should lose
our property we must say, “Although I have lost my property, I will not lose
my soul.”
Third, if I am contradicted, if persecutions assail me, if insults come
my way, I must be resolved to bear them patiently, and hold a death grip
on the one thing worth desiring - not of revenge - but friendship with God.
“Everyone that is angry with his brother shall be liable to judgment.”
In my trials, I will look to my crucified Savior and see less reason to complain
about the scratches of injustice which I suffer.
.
Finally, to obtain meekness and rid myself of anger against my brother,
we need always to look into our own souls, into our past lives, littered
with so much offense to almighty God. For if I will consider my sins,
and how greatly I deserve to be punished and chastised for my sins, then I
will be more easily resigned to submit calmly to present evils. St.
Augustine says, “although we are sometimes innocent of the crime for which
we are persecuted, we are nevertheless guilty of other sins which merit still
greater punishment than that which we endure."
As the Gospel relates, God accepts no gift unless the giver be reconciled
to his neighbor. God wills harmony among mankind so much that ‘though
you offer spilled blood for the faith’, He will not accept the gift unless
you are reconciled to your brother. Therefore, let us present
our gifts to God wrapped in anger - not towards our brother - but for our
sin and that of our neighbor; and include, of course, the bow of contrition
with its firm purpose of amendment.