Anger and Meekness

Anger is first of all a passion, a movement of the soul that seizes us before what resists. It arises from what tradition calls the irascible appetite, the power by which we confront what is hard, distinct from the concupiscible appetite, the one that draws us toward what pleases. Anger belongs to this second power: it responds to an injustice, real or felt, and presses to set it right. Taken at this root, it is a spring of nature, with no moral value of its own. Its quality comes from what it serves, reason enlightened by charity, or the disorder of the heart.

Greek distinguishes two words that Paul sets side by side when he asks us to put away: thymos (θυμός) and orgē (ὀργή) in Ephesians 4:31. The first names the sudden outburst, the seething that rises and subsides; the second, settled anger, become a lasting disposition. Sin lies in wait chiefly for the second.

Anger can be holy

That anger can serve God, the Gospel shows at its summit. When Jesus enters the Temple and finds it turned into a market, he weaves a whip of cords and drives out the sellers; his disciples then remember the word: “Zeal for thy house hath eaten me up.” John 2:17. Mark records another look: before those who watch him on a sabbath to catch him at fault, Jesus regards them “with anger, being grieved for the hardness of their hearts” Mark 3:5. This anger is the living refusal that God’s holiness sets against evil.

Paul draws from it the rule that holds both edges: “Be angry, and sin not; let not the sun go down upon your anger.” Ephesians 4:26. The movement is allowed, its prolonging forbidden.

When it becomes sin

Anger tips into fault at three points. By its cause, when one is roused without just motive, or beyond what the motive calls for. By its duration, when it smoulders and hardens into resentment, which is just what the limit of the setting sun aims at. By its effects, when it passes into vengeance, into insult, into blows. Pushed to the end, it becomes one of the seven capital sins, the source of many other faults.

The first account of death gives its anatomy. To Cain, whose face is altered with resentment, God addresses a warning that holds for every man: “Why art thou angry? and why is thy countenance fallen? If thou do well, shalt thou not receive? but if ill, shall not sin forthwith be present at the door? but the lust thereof shall be under thee, and thou shalt have dominion over it.” Genesis 4:6-7. Cain did not have dominion: his roused jealousy led his hand, and the first murder was born of the anger he let grow.

Christ traces homicide back beneath the act. In the Sermon on the Mount, he teaches that “whosoever is angry with his brother shall be in danger of the judgment” Matthew 5:22. The law passes from the hand to the heart, where murder begins.

The inner root

Anger flares most often where a self judges itself attacked, contradicted, despised: it is the reaction of a thwarted claim. This is why humility is its first remedy. It dries up the source, because it no longer defends a self at all costs.

The remedy: meekness

The proper remedy of anger has a name, meekness, or mildness, the virtue that submits the irascible movement to reason. Christ joins it to humility when he invites: “Learn of me, because I am meek, and humble of heart.” Matthew 11:29. The two hold together. Humility works upstream: it takes from the heart the claim that thinks itself offended, and so removes from anger what kindles it. Meekness works downstream: upon this heart already calmed by humility, it orders each reaction, restrains the outburst, measures word and gesture. The one calms the depth of the heart, the other governs its reactions; without humility, anger would stay alive within, and meekness could only hold it in from without.

Scripture calls Moses the meekest of men Numbers 12:3. Yet at Meribah, impatience before the people makes him strike the rock instead of speaking to it, and this anger closes the Promised Land to him Numbers 20:10-12. Even the meek must watch: meekness is a guard kept every day.

Patience completes it, bearing evil without being troubled. James makes it a measure: “Let every man be swift to hear, but slow to speak, and slow to anger. For the anger of man worketh not the justice of God.” James 1:19-20. The expression “slow to anger” translates the Hebrew erekh appayim (אֶרֶךְ אַפַּיִם), literally “long of nostrils”: the reddening face and the quickened breath are the visible signs of the outburst, and the man “long of nostrils” is the one in whom these signs are slow to appear, that is, who is not quick to grow angry. God reveals himself thus to Moses: “O the Lord God, merciful and gracious, patient and of much compassion, and true.” Exodus 34:6. Man’s patience imitates the long-suffering of God.

The means of each day

Solomon points to the gesture that quenches instead of stoking: “A mild answer breaketh wrath: but a harsh word stirreth up fury.” Proverbs 15:1. He also measures true strength: “The patient man is better than the valiant: and he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh cities.” Proverbs 16:32. There remains, finally, to render to God the justice one would take for oneself, following Paul’s call: “Revenge not yourselves, my dearly beloved; but give place unto wrath, for it is written: Revenge is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord.” Romans 12:19.

Anger asks less to be torn out than to be ordered: zeal for the good sets it right, meekness measures it, charity purifies it.