when we're quick to anger

St Hermas talks to us today in A Year with the Church Fathers about controlling our anger. He says that we all tend to get angry about the silliest of things... and he's right. While there ARE big important things to be angry about, like killing people, we tend to get angriest about the smallest things, like someone saying something bad about us when we're not around.

The word "mad" used to mean crazy. It still does, but only in an archaic sense. "Are you mad?" means "Are you angry?" today, not "Are you crazy?" But the existence of that word, which once meant insane and now means angry, gives us a good insight into what St Hermas is telling us. He says that when we give in to anger, we then find ourselves falling into a "frenzy". And this frenzy leads to no good. You've probably seen people, either in movies or in real life, who do something horrible while in this "frenzy", and then as soon as it's done (usually hurting or killing someone), they sort of snap out of it and realize that their action is so incredibly out of proportion to the thing that started their anger to begin with, which they often say they don't even remember. "What were we fighting about again?"

So we know from all of this that giving in to our anger is a bad thing. The Bible tells us to be slow to anger. But there are some people who have a temperament that is QUICK to anger. What do they do?

Well, each of us has a temperament that is prone to one sin or another. Some are prone to envy. Some to pride. Some to sloth. Some to lust. There are certain sins that each of us must fight more than the others. It's no excuse that we're prone to them... it's our cross to carry, our burden to bear.

But we don't bear it alone. God will give us grace to overcome the sins we're prone to. We just need to ask for His help, and accept it when it comes. And we also need to remember that just because we personally are not prone to a certain sin, like say, gambling, that others ARE prone to that sin, and we should be patient with them. If someone struggles with alcoholism, we should be patient with them, since God is patient with us regarding the sin WE struggle with.

Thank You, God, for teaching us how to deal with the sins we're prone to, and how to accept Your help with them.