The Vice of Anger
THE SIXTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY
Over these first several weeks of Trinity-Tide, you might have noticed that the Old Testament lessons have served as our primary sermon text. Last week, Dcn. Jason did a fine job in teaching from the book of Ecclesiastes how the vanity of this earthly life, which so often breeds dejection and apathy, is finally mastered by living a life that truly matters: the meaningful life being one which is wholly offered as a pleasing sacrifice to God. Since our Trinity-Tide emphasis is on growth in the spiritual life, we are attempting, week by week, to cultivate the virtues from the wisdom and prophets of the Old Testament readings appointed for each Sunday.
Our exercise is not merely for moral enhancement but perfection; to become as the Perfect Man, the Lord Jesus Christ. The reward of virtue is participation in the Divine Life, enjoying unimpeded union within the very life of God himself: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And we participate in this perfect communion as we offer ourselves as a gift to God, open and receptive to the Trinitarian movement by which our very lives are transformed by His life whereby we become a more beautiful gift to God and to one another.
And as we know too well, it is sin and vice which makes us ugly. Unholy desire and disordered passions take us further from Divine enjoyment and are the way of death. This Christian life, enabled by grace, is a never-ending war waged upon concupiscence and sin. We must not serve them but put sin to death. St. Paul tells us, "knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin." The power of sin over us has been destroyed, we are no longer its slave, and yet, we want to run back to that old yoke just as Israel longed for the fleshpots of Egypt.
For though the chains of sin have been broken, and we can choose the good, we are imperfect, the flesh, our wills, and loves are imperfect, and so we succumb to the desires of the flesh, the eyes, and the pride of life. With St. Paul, we cry out from the depths of our humanity, "Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?" (Rom 7:24). And so, scripture calls us to sobriety, to gird up the loins in the battle against vice, to put it do death, by pursuing holiness and virtue.
The mortification of sin has been a hallmark of Christian spirituality, most notably in the writings of St John of the Cross, Thomas Aquinas, and Suarez. They speak of The Way of Purgation, which is defined as the active spiritual cleansing of the soul. The purgative way is the willful confrontation of sinful desires and our many disordered passions. We purge sin from the soul, in cooperation with the Holy Spirit, renouncing sin and resisting concupiscence, which are at war with love, charity, and every Christian virtue.
If you look closely enough at the selected Epistle and Gospel readings for the first nine weeks of Trinity-Tide, you will find them to be wholly centered on this Purgative Way, which demands the acknowledgment and willingness to face our sins to cleanse us from every hindrance and barrier to the blessings of God. Friends, we will never have growth in the spiritual life unless we are honest about ourselves and possess a level of humility willing to acknowledge sin. A humility that recognizes its utter dependence upon the loving-kindness and mercy of God. Like the Giants Caleb spied out in Canaan, sin hinders our inheriting the goodness of God, which lies in the land of promise.
So, we must face and slay these Giants and take hold of what God has already given us in Christ. We desperately need the assistance of the Holy Spirit, to reorder our love's and misdirected passions. To slay the vice of pride, that believes itself better than God. To defeat the ugliness of Vainglory, which loves self above others. To be rid of dejection (or what is classically called accede), which produces the soul-killing fruit of dejection and despair. Do you not desire to turn from wickedness and vice and run into the arms of Christ, who in the words of the Psalmist, "healeth those that are broken in heart, and gives medicine to heal our sickness" (Ps 147:3). Then, let us turn our attention this morning to the vice of anger and pray for healing and peace.
Hear the words of our Lord from today's Gospel reading, "But I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment." In his work, On The Eight Vices, St. John Cassian, the 5th-century monk, writes, "the deadly poison of anger has to be utterly rooted out from the inmost corners of our soul. For as long as this remains in our hearts, and blinds with its hurtful darkness the eye of the soul, we can neither be partakers of life, or retentive of righteousness or even have the capacity for spiritual and true light."
Anger is a destroyer of souls that messes with our spiritual eyes. When we're enraged and only see red, we lose sight of reason. We become as fools acting rashly saying and doing things we regret. Anger quickly becomes violence of the tongue and sometimes physical. Cassian says anger brings nothing but dishonor even to the most honorable of people. An angry man plays the fool, becoming the cursed fig tree producing sinful fruit.
But is all anger sinful and unbeneficial? As a passion, Aquinas teaches that anger itself is neither good nor evil. In fact, anger can be noble and good if directed toward maintaining justice and correcting vice. Noble anger is a passionate desire to confront the face of a perceived evil and make it right. We see this in the church's continual fight against the atrocity of abortion. Holy anger isn't about getting even or avenging hurts. Rather, it's aim is to protect the good: defending the good of the community, even the good of those who do us harm.
But Virtuous anger also seeks good for the self. It desires the rightness of being. First and foremost, we should be most enraged over our own sins, noble anger should swell from within, unleashing holy wrath in the soul as the first shot across the bow in the war within ourselves. St. Cassian calls this a "useful anger."
And it is profitable when by it, we rage against the lust of the flesh and unprofitable emotions of the heart. When things we would be ashamed to do or say before others enter into the heart's conscience, we should tremble, knowing that the very eyes of God Himself are upon us, the eye of Him from whom all hearts are open and from whom no secrets are hid. This is anger towards sin, which leads to repentance, and therefore it is good and virtuous.
But there is unholy anger as well, which is a vice, a state of sin that completely unravels the great commandment of loving God and others. Jesus said, "But I say unto you, whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment." Anger is sinful, first, when we are angry over the wrong things – over things that are not unjust. Without just cause, our anger is sinful because we are angry over the wrong things.
We sin in anger because our motives aren't virtuous. When someone hurts or upsets us, we can succumb to a vindictive attitude bent on seeing that person suffer. Wishing harm on others and desiring their failure. We want to switch on the bright lights and expose their wrongdoing so everyone can see their wickedness. And this desire isn't for their ultimate good that they might repent and be restored, but because we want to witness their demise. This anger is a poison, and it is a vice.
Virtuous anger, however, seeks the well-being of our enemies. Thus, the virtuous man hopes that those who do evil will repent of their wickedness and return to the good. But unholy anger cares nothing for the soul of our offenders. We just want to see them get what they deserve. But my friends, let us "not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good" (Rom 12:21).
Anger can also become sinful when it is too fierce. This primarily happens in two ways. First, our thoughts towards our offenders can be far too severe. For example, this can happen when we hold a grudge, when displeasure towards someone morphs into hate, or when we secretly wish harm upon the person. Second, excessive anger can externally manifest itself in our actions towards someone who upset us – if, for example, we respond in a fury over the smallest matter, or when we enact a punishment far exceeding the crime, or purposefully neglect basic courtesies towards those who harm us.
Sinful anger in any of these forms is a capital vice in that it gives birth to many other vices. Anger's offspring are indignation (resentment, annoyance) swelling up of the mind, disordered speech, reviling and shaming others, fighting, violence, and blasphemy. Anger tends toward sinful thoughts about a person, whereby we have strong displeasure or ill will toward them. It also leads to sins of the tongue, speaking injurious words either face to face or behind their back, mocking, criticizing, and trying to get others to turn against the object of our anger.
But let us heed the words of Christ once more who says, "And whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council: but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire." Virtuous anger seeks to right injustices and restores those who do evil, but vicious anger seeks the harm of those we abhor. Virtuous anger builds up the community by correcting vice. But sinful anger tears it down by endeavoring to wound our enemies.
Cassian writes, "Wherefore if we wish to gain the substance of that divine reward of which it is said, Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God, we ought not only to banish anger from our actions, but entirely to root it out from our inmost soul." Purgation. This is the first step. St. Paul exhorts us, "Let all anger, and wrath, and clamor, and evil speaking, be taken away from among you, with all malice" (Eph 4:31). When St. Paul says, let all sinful anger be taken away from you, he means to purge it from your soul for there is no use for it whatsoever in the Christian life.
Anger has no place within the life of Christian relationships, and certainly none in our relationship with Christ. "Therefore if thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath ought against thee, leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift." Anger between brothers and sisters never exists within a vacuum.
Our anger towards our fellow Christians not only harms them but does violence to Christ. Furthermore, it deafens God's ear to our prayer and renders any sacrifice that we would offer as unclean. And here, we have arrived at the insidiousness of this vice: it causes us to sin against our neighbor and God. It seeks evil, not good; harm not protection; death, not life.
So, friends, what must we do? Let us pursue peace. The pursuit of peace is how we cut off anger at its root, not merely its fruits. The Psalmist says, "Turn away from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it" (Ps 34:14). In today's gospel, the Lord Jesus tells us to drop our wrongful anger and pursue peace with our brethren, then, not only will the healing begin, but our offering (our very lives) will be a pleasing and acceptable sacrifice. Instead of evading those to whom our misguided anger is directed, we are to go them offering the branch of peace.
And similarly, if someone has anything against us, then we should leave our gift, that is, postpone our prayers, and hasten first to offer satisfaction to them; so that when our brother's cure is first effected, we may bring the offering of our prayers without blemish. Whether wronged or in the wrong, our prayer will lose its effect if our brother has anything against us, just as much as if we are harboring feelings of bitterness and a swelling and wrathful spirit against him. But remember, attaining peace in our hearts does not depend on another's will but lies in our own control.
The chief part then of our improvement and peace of mind must not be made to depend on another's will, which cannot possibly be subject to our authority, but it lies rather in our own control. And so the fact that we are not angry ought not to result from another's perfection, but from our own virtue, which is acquired, not by somebody else's patience, but by our own long-suffering. We must be patient with others and patient with ourselves, just as the Lord is patient towards us. Remember, God "is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance" (1 Pt 3:9).
But we must desire to be healed and turn towards mercy. Because the Lord brings healing to those that let themselves be healed. Our Old Testament passage from the prophet Isaiah reminds us that the ground of all salvation is the unity of the highness and lowness in God, which love mediates. "For thus saith the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy; I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones."
Our God is enthroned as the highest and absolutely holy being in the highest majesty and glory, and yet at the same time, He makes Himself low and dwells with the wretched and contrite in order to give them new life (ver. 15). For He is angry for a while, but the foundation of His being is still love. Hence, He cannot let the spirit, the soul of men, His own creatures, be destroyed (vers. 16). On account of sin, indeed, He smites a man. And yet when the man, not reformed by Divine chastisement, perseveres in erroneous ways (ver. 17), still our Lord does not give him up.
In fact, The Lord applies the exact opposite mode of treatment. Beloved, hear and receive the merciful Good News of God who despite our sinful anger and the many ways in which we transgress against Him says, "I have seen his ways, and will heal him: I will lead him also, and restore comforts unto him and to his mourners. I create the fruit of the lips; Peace, peace to him that is far off, and to him that is near, saith the LORD; and I will heal him."
He heals us by working inwardly on our hearts by gentle means, as far, of course, as there is the necessary receptivity for this healing treatment, that is, the capacity of being sorry for the ways of the past (ver. 18). You see, repentance and humility always meet Divine mercy. And forgiveness results in peace. Peace with God and peace with one another. Humble yourselves. Repent. Purge all vice. Pursue peace. This is the way of life. Amen+
