Just Anger
April 14, 2026
Hello! How is each and every one? Last Sunday we celebrated Divine Mercy Sunday
praying for peace all over the world, for the conflicts between countries and
peoples to stop with peaceful amicable commitments for the good of all
nations. It is a war between good and
evil. Let us pray that the God of peace
reign in the hearts and minds of each and every person created in the image and
likeness of God Himself. Only God is in
control and yet He Himself respects the personal freedom of each one but with
personal responsibility. For in the
heart of each one of us is written the natural law clearly “Do good and avoid
evil”. God is absolute good and His
enemy, the devil is evil.
God created each one of us in His image and likeness and He sent His only begotten Son, Jesus to suffer and die on the Cross to make up for the sin of our first parents and redeem each one of us back into God’s family as His children. He wants us to love one another and be happy with Him in this life as well as after in Heaven. He died on the cross to bring us back to life.
Let us continue praying and offering whatever difficulties, trials, work, relationships, suffering, sickness, misunderstanding, we can bear and offer to God for peace among us all in and throughout the world.
Lord, have mercy on us and grant us your peace.
Following is about anger, the continuation of the first word of Jesus from the Cross (From The Cries of Jesus from the Cross, A Fulton J. Sheen’s Anthology).
4 Anger
The one passion in man that has deeper roots in his rational nature than any other is the passion of anger. Anger and reason are capable of great compatibility because anger is based upon reason, which weighs the injury done and the satisfaction to be demanded. We are never angry unless someone has injured us in some way — or we think he has.
But not all anger is sinful, for there is such a thing as just anger. The most perfect expression of just anger we find in Our Blessed Lord’s cleansing of the Temple. Passing through its shadowed doorways at the festival of the Pasch, He found greedy traders, victimizing at every turn the worshippers who needed lambs and doves for the Temple sacrifices.
Making a scourge of little cords, He moved through their midst with a calm dignity and beautiful self-control even more compelling than the whip. The oxen and sheep He drove out with His scourge; with His hands, He upset the tables of the money changers, who scrambled on the floor after their rolling coins; with His finger He pointed to the vendors of doves and bade them leave the outer court; to all He said: “Take these things hence, and make not the house of my Father a house of traffic” (John 2:16).
Here was fulfilled the injunction of the Scriptures, “Be angry, and sin not” (Eph. 4:26), for anger is no sin under three conditions:
1. If the cause of anger be just; for example, defense of God’s honor
2. If it is no greater than the cause demands,
that is, if it is kept under control
3. If it is quickly subdued: “Let not the sun go down upon your anger” (Eph. 4:26)
Here we are not concerned with just anger, but
with unjust anger, namely, that which has no rightful cause — anger that is
excessive, revengeful, and enduring; the kind of anger and hatred against God
that has destroyed religion on one-sixth of the earth’s surface and which in
Spain burned twenty-five thousand churches and chapels and murdered twelve
thousand servants of God: the kind of hatred that is directed not only against
God, but also against one’s fellow man and is fanned by the disciples of class
conflict who talk peace but glory in war; the red anger that rushes the blood
to the surface, and the white anger that pushes it to the depths and bleaches
the face; the anger that seeks to “get even,” to repay in kind bump for bump,
punch for punch, eye for eye, lie for lie; the anger of the clenched fist prepared
to strike, not in defense of that which is loved but in offense against that
which is hated; in a word, the kind of anger that will destroy our civilization
unless we smother it by love.
Our Blessed Lord came to make reparation for the sin of anger, first by teaching us a prayer: “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us”; and then by giving us a precept: “Love your enemies; do good to them that hate you” (Matt. 5:44). More concretely still, He added, “Whosoever will force thee one mile, go with him another two. . . . If a man . . . take away thy coat, let go thy cloak also unto him” (see Matt. 5:40–41).
Revenge and retaliation were forbidden: “You have heard that it has been said: an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. But I say unto you, Love your enemies” (Matt. 5:38, 44). These precepts were made all the more striking because He practiced them.
When the Gerasenes became angry at Him because He put a higher value on an afflicted man than on a herd of swine, Scripture records no retort: “And entering into the boat, He passed over the water” (Matt. 9:1). To the soldier who struck Him with a mailed fist, He meekly responded: “If I have spoken evil, give testimony of the evil, but if well, why strikest thou me?” (John 18:23).
The perfect reparation for anger was made on Calvary. We might also say that anger and hate led Our Lord up that hill. His own people hated Him, for they asked for His crucifixion; the law hated Him, for it forsook justice to condemn Justice; the Gentiles hated Him, for they consented to His death; the forests hated Him, for one of its trees bore the burden of His weight; the flowers hated Him, as they wove thorns for His brow; the bowels of the earth hated Him, as it gave its steel as hammer and nails.
Then, as if to personalize all that hatred, the first generation of clenched fists in the history of the world stood beneath the Cross and shook them in the face of God. That day they tore His body to shreds as in this day they smash His tabernacle to bits. Their sons and daughters have shattered crucifixes in Spain and Russia as they once smote the Crucified on Calvary.
Let no one think the clenched fist is a phenomenon of the twentieth century; they whose hearts freeze into fists today are but the lineal descendants of those who stood beneath the Cross with hands lifted like clubs against Love as they hoarsely sang the First International of hate.
As one contemplates those clenched fists, one cannot help but feel that if ever anger would have been justified, if ever Justice might have fittingly judged, if ever Power might have rightfully struck, if ever Innocence might have lawfully protested, if ever God might have justly revenged Himself against man — it was at that moment.
And yet, just at that second when a sickle and a hammer combined to cut down the grass on Calvary’s hill to erect a cross, and drive nails through hands to render impotent the blessings of Love incarnate, He, like a tree that bathes in perfume the axe that kills it, lets fall from His lips for the earth’s first hearing the perfect reparation for anger and hate — a prayer for the army of clenched fists, the first word from the Cross: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
The greatest sinner may now be saved; the blackest sin may now be blotted out; the clenched fist may now be opened; the unforgivable may now be forgiven. While they were most certain that they knew what they were doing, He seizes upon the only possible palliation of their crime and urges it upon His heavenly Father with all the ardor of a merciful Heart: ignorance — “they know not what they do.” If they did know what they were doing as they fastened Love to a tree, and still went on doing it, they would never be saved. They would be damned.
It is only because fists are clenched in ignorance that they may yet be opened into folded hands; it is only because tongues blaspheme in ignorance that they may yet speak in prayer. It is not their conscious wisdom that saves them; it is their unconscious ignorance.
The reason for forgiving is ignorance. Divine Innocence found such a reason for pardon; certainly, guilt can do no less. St. Peter’s first sermon used this very excuse of ignorance for the Crucifixion so fresh in his mind: “The author of life you killed . . . and now, brethren, I know that you did it through ignorance, as did also your rulers” (Acts 3:15, 17).
If there were full consciousness of the evil, perfect deliberation, perfect understanding of the consequences of acts, there would be no room for forgiveness. That is why there is no redemption for the fallen angels. They knew what they were doing. We do not. We are very ignorant — ignorant of ourselves and ignorant of others.
Ignorant of others! How little we know of their motives, their good faith, the circumstances surrounding their actions. When others visit violence upon us, we too often forget how little we know about their hearts and say: “I cannot see that they have the slightest excuse; they knew very well what they were doing.” And yet in exactly the same circumstances, Jesus found an excuse: “They know not what they do.”
We know nothing about the inside of our neighbor’s heart, and hence we refuse to forgive. Jesus knew the heart inside out, and because He did know, He forgave. Take any scene of action, let five people look upon it, and you will get five different stories of what happened. No one of them sees all sides. Our Lord does, and that is why He forgives.
Why is it that we can find excuses for our anger against our neighbor, and yet we refuse to admit the same excuses when our neighbor is angry with us? We say others would forgive us if they understood us perfectly, and that the only reason they are angry with us is because “they do not understand.”
Why is not that ignorance reversible? Can we not be as ignorant of their motives, as we say they are ignorant of ours? Does not our refusal to find an excuse for their hatred tacitly mean that under similar circumstances, we ourselves will be unfit to be forgiven?
Ignorance of ourselves is another reason for forgiving others. Unfortunately, it is ourselves we know least; our neighbor’s sins, weaknesses, and failures we know a thousand times better than our own. Criticism of others may be bad, but it is want of self-criticism, which is worse.
It would be less wrong to criticize others if we first criticized ourselves, for if we first turned the searchlight into our own souls, we would never feel we had a right to turn it on the soul of anyone else. It is only because we are ignorant of our true condition that we fail to realize how badly we stand in need of pardon.
Have we ever offended God? Has He any right to be angry with us? Then why should we, who need pardon so badly, strive not to purchase it by pardoning others? The answer is because we never examine our own consciences. We are so ignorant of our true condition that we know little more of ourselves than our name and address and how much we have; of our selfishness, our envy, our detraction, our sin, we know absolutely nothing. In fact, in order that we may never know ourselves, we hate silence and solitariness. Lest our conscience should carry on with us an unbearable repartee, we drown out its voice in amusements, distractions, and noise. If we met ourselves in others, we would hate them.
If we knew ourselves better, we would be more forgiving of others. The harder we are on ourselves, the easier we will be on others; the man who has never learned to obey knows not how to command and the man who has never disciplined himself knows not how to be merciful.
It is always the selfish who are unkind to others, and those who are hardest on themselves are the kindest to others, as the teacher who knows the least is always the most intolerant to his pupils.
Only a Lord who thought so little of Himself as to become man and die like a criminal could ever forgive the weakness of those who crucified Him.
It is not hatred that is wrong; it is hating the wrong thing that is wrong. It is not anger that is wrong; it is being angry at the wrong thing that is wrong. Tell me your enemy, and I will tell you what you are. Tell me your hatred, and I will tell you your character.
Do you hate religion? Then your conscience bothers you. Do you hate the capitalists? Then you are avaricious, and you want to be a capitalist. Do you hate the laborer? Then you are selfish and a snob. Do you hate sin? Then you love God. Do you hate your hate, your selfishness, your quick temper, and your wickedness? Then you are a good soul, for “If any man come to me . . . and hate not his own life, he cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:26).
The second lesson to be
derived from this first word from the Cross is that there is no limit to
pardon. Our Lord forgave when He was innocent and not because He Himself had
been forgiven. Hence, we must forgive not only when we have been forgiven, but
even when we are innocent.
The problem of the limits of pardon once troubled Peter, and He asked our Lord: “How often shall my brother offend against me, and I forgive him? Till seven times?” (Matt. 18:21). Peter thought he was stretching forgiveness by saying “seven times,” for it was four more times than the Jewish Masters enjoined.
Peter proposed a limit beyond which there was to be no forgiveness. He assumed that the right to be forgiven is automatically renounced after seven offenses. It is equivalent to saying, “I renounce my right to collect debts from you if you never owe me more than seven dollars, but if you exceed that sum, then my duty of further cancellation ceases. I can throttle you for eight dollars.”
Our Lord, in answering Peter, says that forgiveness has no limits; forgiveness is the surrender of all rights and the denial of limits. “I say not to thee till seven times but till seventy times seven” the parable of the unjust steward who, immediately after being forgiven by his lord a debt of ten thousand talents, choked a fellow servant who owed him a hundred pence. The unmerciful steward, by refusing to be merciful to his debtor, had his own mercy revoked. His guilt was not that, needing mercy, he refused to show it, but having received mercy, he was unmerciful still. “So also shall my heavenly Father do to you if you forgive not everyone his brother” (Matt18:35).
Forgive then, and we will be forgiven; remit our anger against others and God will remit His anger against us. Judgment is a harvest where we sow what we reap. If we sowed anger against our brethren during life, we will reap the just anger of God. Judge not, and we shall not be judged.
If, during life, we forgive others from our hearts, on Judgment Day the all-wise God will permit something very unusual to Himself: He will forget how to add and will know only how to subtract. He who has a memory from all eternity will no longer remember our sins. Thus, we will be saved once again through divine “ignorance.”
By forgiving others on the ground that they know not what they do, Our Lord will forgive us on the ground that He no longer remembers what we did. It may well be that if He looks on a hand that now, after hearing the first word on the Cross, gives a kindly blessing to an enemy, He will even forget that it was once a clenched fist red with the blood of Christendom.
And dar’st thou venture still to live in sin,
And crucify thy dying Lord again?
Were not His pangs sufficient? Must he bleed
Yet more? O, must our sinful pleasures feed
Upon his torments, and augment the story
Of the sad passion of the Lord of glory!
Is there no pity? Is there no remorse
In human breasts? Is there a firm divorce
Betwixt all mercy and the hearts of men?
Parted for ever — ne’er to meet again?
No Mercy bides with us: ’tis thou alone,
Hast it, sweet Jesus, for us, that have
none
For thee: thou hast forestall’d our markets so
That all’s above, and we have none below:
Nay, blessed Lord, we have not wherewithal
To serve our shiftless selves: unless we call
To thee, thou art our Savior, and hast power
To give, and whom we crucify each hour:
We are cruel, Lord, to thee and ourselves too;
Jesus forgive us; we know not what we do.1
— Victory over Vice
1 Francis Quarles, “On Man’s Cruelty.”
Need I say more? I think there is already a lot to reflect on and to talk to Jesus about in the quiet moments of our conversation with Him. Let us make a resolve to put effort in making the sentiments of Christ on the Cross our sentiments as well. Little by little we will be able to with His help.
Let us not waste our life without thinking of the good of
the whole family of God on earth by doing whatever we can to respond to God’s call
every time. Meantime let us rejoice with Our Mother Mary over the resurrection
of her Son. Let us reap what Jesus sowed
during His life, passion, death and resurrection.
See you in the next post,
“May tomorrow be a perfect day; may
you find love and laughter along the way; may God keep you in his tender care;
‘til He brings us together again.”
Affectionately,
Guadalupinky
Comments
Post a Comment