Franciscans of Life

Disclaimer: the information on this site is not intended or implied to be a substitute for professional medical or spiritual advice, diagnosis, or treatment. For physical / psychological issues, please discuss the matter with your P.C.P. and/or seek anger management or mental health counseling. There is absolutely nothing wrong with doing so, nor are you “crazy”, if you take proactive steps for the sake of your health and of your mind. For spiritual issues, please amend your life, increase your life of prayer (particularly Confession and Mass attendance, as well as reading the Gospels and praying the Rosary) and discuss matters with your pastor. 

Hot-button issues bear one characteristic aspect: they incite emotional responses from the reader. Such responses can easily escalate into violence, either overtly or covertly, as we have been witnessing recently across the Nation.

We have to be very careful to monitor our emotions and regulate them so as not to lose control of ourselves and do things that will hurt ourselves – as well as others – and fuel our rage as time passes and our control over our passions becomes weaker.

Rage has a way of leading one to self-destruction in the search for peace. Sometimes it can lead to “self-medicating” with drugs or alcohol, or other addictive substances and behaviors. Their relief is short. The person then moves on to bigger and more “efficient” ways of expressing the anger. That is when anger can become physical: the destruction of property, for example.

If one is not stopped, such action only feeds the fire of Hell within, which keeps the anger burning with a flame that never runs out of fuel.

When destruction of property fails to suffocate the interior rage, the person then turns on living beings – animals first, then human beings – trying in every possible way to control them, provoke them, or bully them.

By that point, Satan is satisfied: he has been allowed to lead the person into serious evil. At this level, the person starts to make excuses instead of working on recovering interior peace. “See what you made me do?” or “If you had done it my way, we wouldn’t be having this problem“.

The demons sit back and laugh: the more one deflects the less they resolve their problem. The rage that has grown in the interior life distorts reality. If a real problem is distorted, any attempt to solve it is severely crippled.

To avoid all of the above, we must begin with ourselves. We must sit back and try to understand what is it that is truly provoking our rage. We usually see that what we are seeing is really the outer shell of a rotten egg… that rot can be something that has nothing to do with the target of one’s fury. It is only when we identify what really makes us angry that we can determine whether it has anything to do with us, or even if we are rightfully angry at all.

If we are justifiably angry, we have regained control over our emotions. Those feelings may not go away, but at least we can exert our free will and authority over our mind and emotions.

Any action that blinds our intelligence can lead us to the behaviors and damage that we described above.

Here are some additional online resources related to this topic.

Physical / psychological:

• How To Help Someone Who Suffers With Severe Anger?  by Fr. John Bartunek LC, SpiritualDirection.com
• The Passion of Anger and the “Miserable Truce” of the Modern Age  by Msgr. Charles Pope
• Review of book “Overcoming Sinful Anger”, by Dan Burke AV and Melissa Elson
• On “Overcoming Sinful Anger”, by The Catholic Gentleman blog
• The Saints Can Teach Us How to Control Our Anger , by Fr. Joseph Esper
• Review of book “Peace Be With You” by SpiritualDirection.com
• Stress, Depression, Anger: a Mental Health Q&A , by Dr. Gregory Popcak
• Catholic Anger Management , by Fr. Jimmy Bonnici
• Struggling with anger? God gives you the tools you need , by Shemaiah Gonzalez
• The Struggle of Saints, by Caritas Catholic Counseling Center
• The Battle of Anger in God’s Prophets, by Msgr. Charles Pope
• Social Media And Spiritual Dangers For Catholics Today, by Fr. Matthew MacDonald
• St. Thomas Aquinas on anger: part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4 , part 5

Spiritual:

• The Catechism – “anger”
• Catholic Encyclopedia: “anger”
• Church Father St. John Cassian on anger
• The Seven Deadly Sins: Anger, by Msgr. Charles Pope
• Learning To Listen To Anger, by Fr. Derek Sakowski
• A Meditation on Anger and Disappointment, by Msgr. Charles Pope
• The Rule Of Three In The Battle Against Sin, by Dan Burke AV
• Is Anger Always a Sin?, by Msgr. Charles Pope
• How uncontrolled anger can open the door to the devil, by Philip Kosloski
• Anger Feeds The Demons, by Msgr. Stephen Rossetti
• When Satan Torments The Mind, by Msgr. Stephen Rossetti
• In this video Msgr. Rossetti – licensed psychologist and appointed exorcist – outlines in an introductory fashion what to do if you think you have demons affecting you: he discusses effective spiritual practices, including the use of sacraments, sacramentals, and appropriate deliverance prayers.
• St. Michael Center for Spiritual Renewal – Deliverance Prayers for Laity
  • note – while this link has prayers cleared for laity, their website does have resources specifically intended for (and restricted to) clerics, whom we humbly encourage to read.

Vita ad Vitam Vocat