Anger has its uses, but it’s never as useful as we think it is. Aristotle pointed out that anger is the emotion that attunes us to justice. Whenever we feel slighted, our sense of injustice flares up and demands we defend ourselves. Yet anger can so easily entrench us into a stifling cynicism and bitterness. Today’s reading from Ezekiel points this out: how easy it is for someone who has excluded God from his or her life to complain, “but the Lord’s way is not fair!”
Teachers and parents often hear this complaint from adolescents. The danger for me, as a teacher dealing with impassioned young men with an acute sense of what they consider fair, is to simply respond likewise. Meet anger with anger. That’s certainly very human. We feel the other’s spite, a visceral lurch in our chest telling us to reply in kind.
It doesn’t work. A cycle cements itself as two different senses of justice keep competing. Jesus—aware of our human, all too human tendencies—tells us that whoever lets that anger seethe through a word such as “fool” is not acting in His name.
I understand Jesus to be warning us about condescension, a feeling of indignant self-righteousness that damns relationships. Condescension will always be our way and never the Lord’s way. As we continue to pray through the sermon on the mount at Mass, we can ask the Lord for the patience and self-knowledge to notice the obstacles we ourselves place to reconciling with our neighbor.