VIth Sunday in Ordinary Time.

VI-Sunday- Anger Management.

There was a little boy with a bad temper. His father gave him a bag of nails and told him that every time he lost his temper, to hammer a nail in the back fence. The first day the boy had driven 37 nails into the fence. Then it gradually dwindled down. He discovered it was easier to hold his temper than to drive those nails into the fence.

Finally the day came when the boy didn't lose his temper at all. He told his father about it and the father suggested that the boy now pull out one nail for each day that he was able to hold his temper. The days passed and the young boy was finally able to tell his father that all the nails were gone. The father took his son by the hand and led him to the fence. He said, "You have done well, my son, but look at the holes in the fence. The fence will never be the same. When you say things in anger, they leave a scar just like this one. It won't matter how many times you say I'm sorry, the wound is still there. A verbal wound is as bad as a physical one.
Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, given in chapters five through seven of Matthew's Gospel, could be called "Lifestyle in the Kingdom of God." Verse 22: says: "But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment; and if you insult a brother or sister, you will be liable to the council; and if you say, 'You fool,' you will be liable to the hell of fire.

St. Paul advises us “Be angry (righteous anger) but do not sin.” (Eph 4: 26). Anger when it lasts is not the sign of righteous anger. Because anger can lead to bitterness, bitterness to grudge and grudge to revenge. So anger leads to murder. When we keep anger in our mind, we are inviting physical illnesses like hypertension and mental illnesses like depression. Learn to relax and keep silence when we are angry, wait before acting on our anger, give it time to detoxify and cool off, pray for God’s strength for self-control, and give the Holy Spirit time to help us to see the event through Jesus’ eyes instead of through anger’s eyes.
Two sisters spent the day fighting. That evening they prepared for bed, still mad at each other. As usual, they knelt by the side of their beds for their prayers. "Dear God," the 8-year-old began, "Bless Daddy and Mommy, bless our cat and dog." Then she stopped. Her mother gently prodded, "Didn’t you forget somebody?" She glared across the bed at her 6-year-old sister and added, "And, oh yes, God, bless my ex-sister." Yes, anger sever our relationships.
Author Kent Crockett tells about Sam and Jacqueline Pritchard, a British couple, who started receiving mysterious phone calls to their home in the middle of the night. The person on the other end never said anything. After a long pause, he would hang up.

The Pritchards changed their phone number to stop the harassing night calls. The stalker changed his tactic. He started sending them obscene and threatening anonymous letters in the mail. Then the problems escalated. The couple discovered their house had been daubed with paint, and their tires were slashed. The Pritchards became prisoners in their own home and spent a small fortune on a security system. They had no idea what they had done to deserve such cruel treatment.

After four months of unexplained terrorism, they finally met the perpetrator. Mr. Pritchard caught James McGhee, a 53-year-old man, while he was damaging their car. As they looked at each other, Pritchard asked McGhee, "Why are you doing this to us?"
McGhee responded, "Oh, no I've got the wrong man!"
McGhee thought he was terrorizing a different man named Pritchard, who had been spreading rumors about him. He found the Pritchards in the telephone directory and assumed that this was the person responsible for slandering him. He got the wrong Pritchard.

What an absurd turn of events; but anger has a tendency to do funny things to us. It blinds us to reality. It blinds us to consequences. It blinds us to the irrational harm that may come from our rage. For your own best interest, if you are angry with someone, let it go. Act quickly before you cause yourself and them any harm.

Jesus is not claiming here that all anger is sin. The Hebrew word for anger occurs 455 times in the Old Testament; 375 of these refer to the anger of God. The Lord does get angry. Nahum the prophet asked, "Who can stand before his indignation? What can endure the heat of his anger?" (Na. 1:03)

Jesus got angry at times. In Mark, chapter 3, we have an example. One Sabbath Day in the synagogue Jesus met a man with a withered hand. Some of the Pharisees were standing around ready to pounce on Jesus if he healed the man, because healing was considered to be work, and that was prohibited on the Sabbath. The Bible says, "Jesus looked around at them with anger." It burned Jesus to see religious people care more about their rules than the well-being of a human being. Jesus became angry when people got hurt or God's house was desecrated. Jesus' anger was never selfish. That is why Jesus tells today that he came to fulfill the law, not just observe the law. The Scribes were observing the law, but Jesus was fulfilling the law.
We ought to get angry about certain things. It ought to anger us that young women are being victimized by businesses that exploit sex in our community. It ought to anger us that our newspapers make money by advertising such businesses. It ought to anger us that over 1 million abortions are performed every year in America. It ought to anger us that in some schools it is easier to pass out condoms than it is to have a graduation prayer. We call this kind of anger righteous indignation. It is godly anger, anger that motivates us to overcome injustice and extend mercy.

That's not the kind of anger Jesus condemns in the Sermon on the Mount. He is attacking a much more common variety that lurks in all our hearts. This is selfish anger. This kind of anger, says James, "worketh not the righteousness of God." Paul was referring to this emotion when he wrote, "Put off all anger, wrath, and malice." (Colossians 3:5)...
Anger is not in itself a sin, even though it leads to many sins. St Thomas Aquinas has a simple argument for that: Our Lord was angry, and he was without sin. He says that while it is true that we can sin through anger, we can also sin through a lack of anger. Anger is always accompanied by hope'. Anger is the emotion that seeks to change things. That is why anger ends in one of two ways. Either the angry person succeeds in changing the object of their anger, or accepts that it can't be changed. Hope is the emotion which believes that it is possible for some good to come out of some evil. Without hope, we could not be angry because we could not have any expectation that our anger could do anything to change things. Jesus’ anger was for the sake of the kingdom. In short, he was angry because he loved us. Most Parents’ anger towards their children could be righteous if they wish their good and if they are able to hug them in the next few minutes.
Jesus warns us against anger, ie. unrighteous anger, and reminds us to find a better way to resolve our conflicts. It is impossible to avoid confrontations and conflict, but we should never let anger poison our relationships or lead to damage that is impossible to undo.