How to Grow in the Fight Against Anger

Before the means, one must measure what is at stake. Anger is not a minor character flaw that one might keep out of convenience: it is a capital vice, a passion that blinds, and a sin which Christ placed under the same precept as murder. Three reasons to fight it relentlessly.

A capital vice that begets the others

The Church, following Saint John Cassian and Saint Gregory the Great, ranks anger among the seven capital sins. The word does not mean they are the gravest of all, but that they are heads (in Latin caput, the head) from which a multitude of other sins are born. The Catechism recalls:

"They are called 'capital' because they engender other sins, other vices. They are pride, avarice, envy, anger, lust, gluttony, sloth or acedia." — Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 1866^[1]

Anger is thus a poisoned spring. From it flow disputes, insults, ruptures, tenacious resentments, sometimes violence and even murder. Fighting it is not merely correcting a quirk: it is drying up a fountain from which many other evils gush forth. Saint Thomas shows precisely how this vice branches out into several "daughters" — more on this below.

A passion that blinds the eye of the soul

The first ravage of anger is not outward, but inward: it takes away man's use of himself. John Cassian, gathering the experience of the monks of Egypt, states this most clearly: as long as anger dwells in the heart, the soul no longer sees clearly.

"As long as this passion is mistress of our heart, and darkens our inner gaze with its thick darkness, we cannot acquire the clarity of discernment… nor possess maturity of counsel, nor true contemplation." — Saint John Cassian, Institutes, book VIII (The Spirit of Anger), ch. 1^[2]

Cassian grounds this diagnosis in Scripture: "My eye is troubled with anger" (Ps 31:10)^[3]. The angry man no longer judges rightly; he mistakes his outbursts for lucidity, his resentments for justice. That is why Saint Thomas ranks anger among the passions which "hinder the judgment of reason": not that all anger is unreasonable, but that, as soon as it flares up, it tends to overflow the reason that was meant to guide it. Fighting anger is therefore first of all defending one's own lucidity — for no one decides well under the grip of fury.

"Everyone who is angry with his brother"

Anger touches at last on what is gravest: it can kill charity. In the Sermon on the Mount, Christ links anger to the precept "You shall not kill," showing that it is the inner root of homicide:

"You have heard that it was said to the men of old: 'You shall not kill…' But I say to you: Everyone who is angry with his brother shall be liable to judgment." — Gospel according to Saint Matthew 5:21-22^[4]

The Catechism comments on this passage by carefully distinguishing the passion from the sin — a decisive distinction for fighting the battle well:

"Anger is a desire for revenge. 'To desire vengeance in order to do evil to someone who should be punished is illicit,' but it is praiseworthy to impose restitution 'to correct vices and maintain justice.' If anger reaches the point of a deliberate desire to kill one's neighbor or to seriously wound him, it goes gravely against charity; it is a mortal sin." — Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 2302^[5]

The whole art of the fight lies in this dividing line: it is not a matter of rooting out all emotion, but of preventing anger from crossing the threshold where it becomes a desire to harm. Venerable Marthe Robin put it in terms of lost charity:

"We make ourselves unworthy of God's love every time we let our heart go to anger, every time we close the door to charity and forgiveness." — Venerable Marthe Robin^[6]

One only fights well what one knows exactly. Many exhaust themselves struggling against anger because they confuse the passion (a neutral movement of nature) with the vice (that passion become disordered), or because they believe they must forbid themselves all indignation. Saint Thomas's discernment dispels these confusions.

The passion and the vice: not every movement of the irascible is a sin

Anger is first a passion, that is, a movement of the sensitive appetite — precisely of the irascible, that part of the soul which rises up against a difficult evil. As such, it is neither good nor bad in itself: it is the energy that makes one react before injustice. Sin does not begin with the feeling, but with consent to a disordered movement. Saint Thomas states it plainly: anger becomes a vice when it departs from right reason — whether one grows irritated when one should not, at whom one should not, more than one should, too quickly or for too long.

"If someone desires that vengeance be exercised according to the order of reason, it is worthy of praise… But if someone desires vengeance in any way whatsoever against the order of reason, for example if he desires the punishment of one who has not deserved it, or beyond what he has deserved… the desire of anger will be vicious, and it is then called anger by sin." — Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, II-II, q. 158, a. 1 and a. 2^[7]

This distinction is liberating for the fighter. Feeling irritation rise is not sinning; it is what one does with that first movement that decides. The fight therefore bears not on the absence of emotion — impossible and not even desirable — but on the mastery of what follows the emotion.

"Righteous anger": when indignation becomes a virtue

There is an anger which the saints not only tolerate, but command: indignation ruled by reason before evil. Far from being a sin, the total absence of such anger can be a defect. Saint Thomas, who here takes up Pseudo-Chrysostom, says it without detour:

"He who is not angry when there is cause to be, sins: for unreasonable patience sows vices, nourishes negligence, and invites to evil not only the wicked, but also the good." — Pseudo-Chrysostom, quoted by Saint Thomas, Summa Theologiae, II-II, q. 158, a. 8^[8]

The perfect model is Christ himself. He who was "meek and humble of heart" (Mt 11:29) looked at the Pharisees "with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart" (Mk 3:5)^[9], and drove the sellers from the Temple with a whip, "zeal for thy house will consume me" (Jn 2:14-17)^[10]. That anger was not an outburst suffered: it was a mastered indignation, ordered to God's honor and the salvation of souls, without hatred and without loss of inner peace. That is what the fight must never destroy. One does not struggle against the capacity to be indignant at evil; one struggles against disordered indignation, which flares up for oneself, out of wounded vanity, against one's neighbor.

The three degrees of the sin of anger

Not every guilty anger has the same gravity. Christ himself, in the continuation of Matthew 5, distinguishes degrees that grow, from the inner movement to the insult that shows contempt:

"Everyone who is angry with his brother shall be liable to judgment. Whoever says to his brother: 'Fool!' shall be liable to the hell of fire." — Gospel according to Saint Matthew 5:22^[11]

Saint Thomas takes up this gradation to measure the sin: anger is all the graver as it pours itself further outward and wounds charity more deeply. It remains venially guilty as long as it stays a passing movement poorly repressed; it becomes mortal when it consents to a grave desire for vengeance, to hatred, or to the contempt that cuts one's brother off from fraternal communion. The following table sets out these degrees.

Reading the table: sin is not born from the first movement, but from what one lets it become. Gravity grows as anger passes from the heart to speech, then to the will to harm. That is why the fight is won early — at the first degree, before anger descends to the next ones.

The daughters of anger

Saint Gregory the Great, in his Morals on the Book of Job, drew up the list of the "daughters" of anger — the sins it gives birth to when left to reign. Saint Thomas takes them up and orders them according as they are born in the heart, in speech, or in deed. Knowing this offspring helps one spot the vice by its fruits, often before having named it in oneself.

"From anger are born quarrels, swelling of the mind, insults, clamors, indignation, and blasphemies." — Saint Gregory the Great, Morals on the Book of Job, XXXI, taken up by Saint Thomas, Summa Theologiae, II-II, q. 158, a. 7^[12]

Reading the table: anger never stays alone. First it swells the heart (contempt, resentment); then it overflows into words (shouts, insults, sometimes blasphemy); finally it passes into deed (disputes, violence). Recognizing one of these daughters is recognizing the mother hiding behind it.

Anger is a cunning adversary. It almost never presents itself as a vice: it disguises itself as justice, zeal, legitimate firmness. Unmasking its ruses is half the battle.

It always believes itself just

Anger's master ruse is to justify itself. The angry man never sees himself as an irascible person: he sees himself as someone who is right, who has been offended, who defends a just cause. Saint Francis de Sales gave the decisive formula:

"It is better to undertake to learn to live without anger than to try to use anger moderately and wisely… for never did any angry man think his wrath unjust." — Saint Francis de Sales, Introduction to the Devout Life, part III, ch. 8^[13]

This observation ruins the pretense of a "well-measured anger" that one would manage at will. In the moment, passion blurs precisely the measure one would need in order to measure it. That is why the saint advises refusing it at the root rather than claiming to dose it once lit: one does not negotiate with a fire one has already let catch.

From the small shoot to the beam

Second ruse: anger looks small at the entrance, and one believes oneself able to contain it. But it grows in an instant. Saint Francis de Sales here quotes Saint Augustine, writing to his friend Profuturus:

"It is better to refuse entrance to anger, however just and equitable it may be, than to receive it, however small it may be; for, once received, it is hard to make it leave: it enters like a small shoot, and in no time it grows and becomes a beam." — Saint Augustine, Letter to Profuturus, quoted by Saint Francis de Sales^[14]

The image is exact: what one lets in as a fragile sprout becomes in a few instants a frame impossible to tear out. Hence the golden rule of the fight — act early, at the very first resentment, and not when anger has taken all the room.

Resentment: anger that settles in

The most lasting ruse is resentment: anger that does not die out in the evening, lodges in memory, and disguises itself as mere "distance" from the one who wounded us. It is this that Saint Paul targets in his famous warning:

"Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil." — Letter to the Ephesians 4:26-27^[15]

The Desert Fathers saw in resentment the direct enemy of prayer. Evagrius Ponticus, the great master of prayer, repeats it in every form:

"Resentment obscures the mind of the one who prays and darkens his prayers… Whoever thinks to pray while storing up griefs and resentments is like one who draws water and pours it into a pierced barrel." — Evagrius Ponticus, Treatise on Prayer, 21 and 22^[16]

Resentment is all the more dangerous because it experiences itself as peaceful: one no longer shouts, one no longer flares up, one has "turned the page" — but the heart stays closed. It is a cold anger, and often more tenacious than the hot kind. The fight is therefore not over when the outburst has passed: it continues until forgiveness has truly reopened the heart.

Anger against oneself

A last ruse, subtler still: growing angry against oneself under the pretext of fervor. Francis de Sales unmasks this trap, in which self-love disguises itself as repentance:

"Many, having grown angry, grow angry at having grown angry, enter into sorrow at having sorrowed; and by this means they keep their heart steeped and soaked in anger… these frettings and bitternesses one has against oneself tend to pride, and have their origin only in self-love, which is troubled and disquieted at seeing us imperfect." — Saint Francis de Sales, Introduction to the Devout Life, part III, ch. 9^[17]

Gnawing at oneself over one's own faults is not correcting oneself: it is keeping the circle of anger going under another name. The true fighter takes himself back in hand with a peaceful firmness, without growing bitter against himself — a subject developed in How to Grow in Gentleness, in the section on gentleness toward oneself.

Here is the practical heart of this article. The spiritual masters did not only describe anger: they indicated precise, proven means, within everyone's reach. They can be grouped into a few great worksites, from the most immediate to the deepest.

Cutting it at the root, from the first movement

The fight is won or lost in the first seconds. Since anger grows as the shoot becomes a beam, the first means is to seize it at the instant it is born, before it swells. But beware of the manner: Francis de Sales warns that one does not tame anger by violence, for wanting to smother it brutally adds trouble to trouble.

"At the first stirring of resentment that you feel, promptly gather your strength, not abruptly nor impetuously, but gently and nevertheless seriously." — Saint Francis de Sales, Introduction to the Devout Life, part III, ch. 8^[18]

Taking hold of one's anger gently, firmly but without tensing over it: such is the right attitude. The humblest and most effective means remains silence — keeping quiet while the first wave passes. "You must learn to break yourself in many things," says the Imitation, "if you wish to keep peace and concord"^[19].

Delaying: waiting for the passion to subside

When anger is too strong to be mastered on the spot, the Fathers' remedy is to delay every word and every action. A reprimand, an answer, a decision made under the sway of anger are almost always bad. Saint Josemaría Escrivá made it a rule for the government of souls:

"Do not rebuke while you feel indignant over the fault committed. Wait until the next day, or even longer. Then, once calm and your intention purified, do not fail in your duty to correct. You will obtain more with a word of affection than with three hours of dispute. Master your temper." — Saint Josemaría Escrivá, The Way, no. 10^[20]

Delaying is not fleeing the duty to correct: it is postponing it to the hour when reason, once again mistress, will do it better. And often, the delay suffices to dispel an anger that believed itself justified. The same saint sums up in one stroke the futility of losing one's temper:

"Why get angry, if your anger offends God, annoys your neighbor, makes you spend a bad quarter of an hour… and if, in the end, you have to calm down?" — Saint Josemaría Escrivá, The Way, no. 8^[21]

Not letting the sun go down

When anger has burst out — for burst out it will —, the apostolic means is not to let it last, and to repair quickly before it turns into resentment. This is the literal sense of Saint Paul's warning: "do not let the sun go down on your anger" (Eph 4:26)^[22]. Francis de Sales draws a very concrete counsel from it: repair at once by a contrary act.

"As soon as you notice that you have committed some act of anger, repair the fault by a prompt act of gentleness toward the same person against whom you were irritated; for, just as fresh wounds are more easily healed, so it is a good remedy against anger to repair it at once by a contrary act of gentleness." — Saint Francis de Sales, Introduction to the Devout Life, part III, ch. 8^[23]

A kind word, a service, an apology offered before it is asked: this contrary gesture disarms anger better than a thousand resolutions, and keeps the wound from festering into resentment.

Tearing out pride, the root of the vice

The preceding means treat the symptoms; the root must also be attacked. Now the root of most outbursts of anger is pride: the "self" that believes itself offended, despised, thwarted in its rights. One flares up almost always because one deems oneself wronged. That is why the Fathers make humility the great antidote to anger: the humble man has almost nothing to defend, hence almost nothing that can inflame him. Saint Basil of Caesarea notes this for the one who must correct another:

"In all circumstances harshness must be excluded, even if one must reprimand: if you first humble yourself, you will easily be accepted by the one who needs your care." — Saint Basil of Caesarea, Small Ascetical Treatise^[24]

Working on humility is therefore working indirectly but profoundly against anger: as the "self" grows small, the occasions for flaring up grow rare. This foundational worksite is developed in How to Grow in Humility.

Praying and forgiving: anger does not stand before prayer

Anger and prayer exclude each other: a heart full of resentment cannot truly pray, and a heart that truly prays empties itself of resentment. Evagrius Ponticus made it a law of the spiritual life:

"Every work of vengeance against a brother who has offended you will be a stumbling block for you at the time of prayer… Prayer is the flower of gentleness and of freedom from anger." — Evagrius Ponticus, Treatise on Prayer, 13 and 14^[25]

John Cassian draws the radical consequence: either one keeps one's anger, and then one can no longer pray without contradicting oneself; or one wishes to pray, and the poison must be cast out.

"There remains for us either never to pray at all, while retaining this poison in our hearts… or else, if we wish to pray, to know that we offer God no prayer." — Saint John Cassian, Institutes, book VIII, ch. 13^[26]

Forgiveness is therefore both a fruit of prayer and its condition: it is by praying for the one who wounded us that resentment is disarmed, and it is by forgiving that access to God is reopened. Christ linked it irreversibly to the Our Father: "forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors." Persevering prayer, finally, gradually calms the very depths of temperament, where the will alone cannot reach.

Having recourse to the sacraments and to grace

The gentleness that overcomes anger is a fruit of the Spirit (Gal 5:22-23), not a mere conquest of the will: it is received as much as it is won. The sources of grace are therefore weapons of the first rank. The Eucharist gives us to receive Christ "meek and humble of heart" and to let his Heart reshape ours. Confession lifts up the soul cast down by its outbursts and restores peace to it. Having regular recourse to these sources is standing where gentleness is rekindled and where anger loses its grip. See How to Grow in Frequent Communion and How to Grow in Regular Confession.

Looking at Christ, meek and patient

A last means, which contains them all: contemplating Christ. Victory over anger is not a technique of self-mastery; it is an imitation. One does not become peaceful by watching oneself — that only makes one tense —, but by looking at Him who, "when insulted, did not insult in return; when suffering, did not threaten, but entrusted himself to the One who judges justly" (1 Pt 2:23)^[27]. The whole Passion is a school of patience victorious over anger: silence before the accusers, "put your sword back into its place" (Mt 26:52), forgiveness of the executioners. Looking at the crucifix in the midst of vexation is recalling that gentleness is not weakness but the very strength of God. This positive imitation is the luminous side of the fight: one does not merely repress a vice, one puts on a virtue. See How to Grow in Gentleness and How to Grow in Patience.

How does one recognize that one is truly growing in this fight? Not by a feeling, but by stable fruits which the saints describe consistently.

Peace of heart and self-possession

The first fruit is peace: not the absence of vexation, but the absence of turmoil amid vexation. The man who has overcome his anger "possesses his soul"; no outward offense commands his reactions anymore. Saint Francis of Assisi made it the very mark of the servant of God:

"The servant of God who remains beyond the reach of anger and turmoil in his dealings with others leads a life in keeping with his vocation, free from all selfish attachment." — Saint Francis of Assisi, Admonitions, 11^[28]

This peace is not insensitivity: it is freedom. The irascible man is the slave of everything that vexes him; the pacified man is free, because he has retaken mastery of the only ground that truly depends on him — his own heart.

Prayer made free and limpid

A second fruit, directly linked to the first: prayer is purified. Where resentment "darkened prayers" (Evagrius), the pacified heart prays without obstacle. The poison removed, the water no longer drains from the pierced barrel. This is one of the surest signs of progress: not only growing angry less, but praying better — with a prayer that no longer stumbles over a face one has not forgiven. Victory over anger restores to the soul the transparency before God which fury had taken from it.

Charity restored and made lovable

A third fruit: charity regains its place. Anger closes the heart; its defeat reopens it. The pacified soul can love again, excuse, bear, return good for evil. The Eternal Father said it to Saint Catherine of Siena: those who "return good for evil" not only show their virtue, they "place the burning coals of charity upon their neighbor's head"^[29]. Thus the fight against a vice opens onto the highest of virtues: overcoming anger is lifting the obstacle that kept charity from radiating. See How to Grow in Charity.

The spirituality of the Divine Will, handed on to the Servant of God Luisa Piccarreta (1865-1947), gives the fight its final accent. "Living in the Divine Will" does not only mean doing God's will by submitting one's own to Him, but having only one will with Him: the Divine Will itself, acting in the soul. For her, overcoming anger is not only repressing a movement: it is letting God's gentleness take the place that anger occupied, until it transforms what it touches.

Jesus teaches Luisa that gentleness has the power to change the nature of things:

"My daughter, gentleness can change the nature of things. It can render bitterness sweet. So, be more gentle!" — The Book of Heaven, vol. 2, May 23, 1899^[30]

This is not sentimental metaphor: it is the spiritual law according to which a soul united to the divine Will receives something of God's own gentleness, and communicates it around itself. Where one's own soul returns blow for blow, the soul that lives in the Divine Will opposes to bitterness a gentleness that disarms it. The fight against anger then ceases to be an exhausting tension of the will alone and becomes the peaceful overflow of a Will greater than ours. Overcoming anger, in this perspective, is letting oneself be raised to God's own patience, who bears with man with an "invincible patience" and never ceases to love him.

Anger is not overcome by grand resolutions, but by a small and repeated faithfulness. The means studied can be summed up in a simple program, graded from the most immediate to the deepest.

Reading the table: none of these acts is spectacular; it is their faithful repetition that transforms a temperament. One begins with silence and delay, the most accessible; then one adds repair, forgiveness, and the deep work on pride.

The essential thing is not to fight anger in general, but to posit, today, the concrete act that presents itself: that sharp word to hold back, that silence to keep, that repair to offer, that resentment to lay down in prayer. For anger is overcome not at one stroke, but instant after instant — until the day when, the heart finally pacified, indignation will burn only for just causes, and gentleness will have taken all the room.

• How to Grow in Gentleness — the virtue which moderates anger and is the "flower of charity": it is the positive goal to which this whole fight is ordered.
• How to Grow in Patience — the sister virtue, which bears present evil and delays without collapsing or growing bitter.
• How to Grow in Humility — the foundational weapon against anger: pride disarmed dries up the source of outbursts.
• How to Grow in Temperance — the cardinal virtue of mastery over the passions, of which meekness is a part.
• How to Grow in Charity — the virtue which anger stifles and whose defeat sets free.