We continue with our little series of the virtues associated with the seven grievous sins of the Christian life. We’ve see that pride is countered with humility, and avarice and envy are countered with charity and its associated virtues of generosity, goodwill and benevolence.
Today, we shall look at the the vice of wrath or anger. As you may have heard me say before, we all have something of a temper when our limit of patience is reached, when we burst out in frustration – but having a temper is not a terrible thing, rather it is what may result from it that is dreadful. The Lord asked us to the turn the other cheek. But we very soon run out of cheeks to turn, and then even the Lord Himself is known to upend tables and chase people around with a whip.
Wrath involves a desire for vengeance, and it grows more unethical with the type of vengeance that is desired and how far the subject is willing to go. Anger can actually be praiseworthy and even justifiable to a point, beyond which it can bring about much harm and injustice, often to a greater extent that is deserved by a malefactor, as from bad judgement or a bad motive, and it can graduate to being a venial sin and then when it directly challenges the love of God and of neighbour a mortal sin.
When justice and charity are thus opposed or likely to be opposed, the Christian heart needs to build a resistance to anger and wrath, and the virtue we are looking for is patience. Patience seems to me to be a type of temperance – it moderates or tempers our frustrations, or our growing rage. Great Saints like S. Thomas Aquinas found patience to be far inferior to the greater virtues of faith and charity, and prudence and justice and fortitude. S. Augustine said that patience is ‘that by which we tolerate evil things with an even mind,’ in order that we may persevere in good behaviour and thus arrive at a happier end. He thought that the suffering of the impatient is more grievous, for they cannot bear to suffer for long and end up making things worse for themselves.
The Holy Father Benedict XVI in his letter Spe salvi taught that patience is a vital companion to Christian hope, and I suppose that if we have our eyes focused on the end-goal of our lives, which is happiness with God in heaven, where we shall enjoy the same glory as the great Saints of the Church, that we can bear more the evils of this life. Pope Benedict said that patience helps us to keep doing good (whether to our family members, or our friends, or anybody else) even when things become difficult and we are staring at apparent failure. More recently, the Holy Father Leo XIV has emphasised also in his allocutions the role of patience in spiritual discernment, in Christian leadership from the role of parents to that of the priests of the Church, and beyond that in the realm of politics and diplomacy, where anger and violence are possible on a grand scale.
Well, let’s look at our readings. The last time we saw these was on the feast day of the Apostle S. Peter at the end of June. I thought I would look up the function of the Prime Minister in our government, in preparation for this comparison I want to make. The PM has the role of appointing ministers and shaping his cabinet, of chairing that cabinet, and maintaining control of the civil service. He does all this on behalf of the king, however half-hearted that is in our times. In our first reading, we find a ‘prime minister’ of the house of David the king, here at a later stage of that kingship, during the days of the prophet Isaiah, when two of the many kings were Achab and Hezekiah.
“Thus saith the Lord God of hosts, ‘Go, get thee in to him that dwelleth in the tabernacle, to Sobna who is over the temple: and thou shalt say to him, What dost thou here, or as if thou wert somebody here? For thou hast hewed thee out a sepulchre here, thou hast hewed out a monument carefully in a high place, a dwelling for thyself in a rock. Behold the Lord will cause thee to be carried away, as a cock is carried away, and He will lift thee up as a garment. He will crown thee with a crown of tribulation, He will toss thee like a ball into a large and spacious country: there shalt thou die, and there shall the chariot of thy glory be, the shame of the house of thy Lord. And I will drive thee out from thy station, and depose thee from thy ministry. And it shall come to pass in that day, that I will call My servant Eliacim the son of Helcias, and I will clothe him with thy robe, and will strengthen him with thy girdle, and will give thy power into his hand: and he shall be as a father to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and to the house of Juda. And I will lay the key of the house of David upon his shoulder: and he shall open, and none shall shut: and he shall shut, and none shall open. And I will fasten him as a peg in a sure place, and he shall be for a throne of glory to the house of his father.”
Prophecy of Isaias, 22: 15-23 [link]
‘He shall be as a father to the inhabitants of Jerusalem…’ It is rather interesting that the word ‘pope’ refers to a ‘father,’ and we also call the Successor of the Apostle the ‘Holy Father.’ This Old Testament officer was invested with a uniform of office and given some sort of key, either a symbolic key or an actual large key somehow pinned to his garment, given charge of the king’s castle, able to admit and dismiss in his absence. We find the same role in the New Testament Church of God, where Christ (aware of His imminent passion and death, and so departure) invests the Apostle S. Peter with the role of prime minister, manager of the house and therefore centre of unity within it.
“And Jesus came into the quarters of Caesarea Philippi, and He asked His disciples, saying, ‘Whom do men say that the Son of man is?’ But they said, ‘Some John the Baptist, and other some Elias, and others Jeremias, or one of the prophets.’ Jesus saith to them, ‘But Whom do you say that I am?’ Simon Peter answered and said, ‘Thou art Christ, the Son of the living God.’ And Jesus answering, said to him, ‘Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jona, because flesh and blood hath not revealed it to thee, but My Father Who is in heaven. And I say to thee, that thou art Peter; and upon this rock I will build My Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give to thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven. And whatsoever thou shalt bind upon earth, it shall be bound also in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose upon earth, it shall be loosed also in heaven.‘ Then He commanded His disciples, that they should tell no one that He was Jesus the Christ.”
Gospel of S. Matthew, 16: 13-20 [link]
This binding and loosing function which is native to the bishops of the church (and delegated in part to priests for such duties as administering the Sacrament of Reconciliation) is exercised in the establishment of holy communion within the Church. Exclusion from communion is known to us as excommunication, and this is rather infrequently and very reluctantly used by the bishops, and always as a corrective measure to protect the eternal soul of the object, and to prevent the spread of error. Let us take this opportunity to pray for the Holy Father in his ministry to the universal Church, for our local bishops in their governance of their dioceses, and our priests in their work in the parishes.
Catholic Louth and Mablethorpe 