So then, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath; for the wrath of man does not produce the righteousness of God. Therefore lay aside all filthiness and overflow of wickedness, and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls. (James 1:19-21)
Origen, writing in the 3rd Century, sees anger as one sign that a person is not fully a disciple of Christ. Anger is the way of the world, whereas meekness, mercy, love, forgiveness and patience are the behaviors consist with the Gospel commandments.
“See to it then, lest, when anger enters your heart, it make you conformed to this world. In a similar way evil desire and greed and the other things in which the present world takes delight may imprint the form of the present world upon you (cf Col 3:5). But if, instead, gentleness, patience, mildness, self-control, faith, truth, and the other virtues should dwell within your mind (cf Gal 5:22-23), they make you conformed to the future world and they would render such a beautiful form to your soul that the Word of God, who has betrothed it to himself in mercy and faith (cf Hos 2:19-20), would say to it, ‘You are altogether beautiful, my love, and there is no flaw in you’ (Song 4:7).” (COMMENTARY ON THE EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS Books 6-10, pp 195-196)
If we conform to the teachings of Christ in the Gospels, especially to the Beatitudes, God will see us as beautiful and blessed. Perfection for us is ever striving to follow Christ’s teachings in every aspect of our lives. It is not a plateau we reach, but a constant growing in virtue, becoming more Christ-like, more Christian as we move through life on earth. St John Cassian in the 5th Century comments:
“… that scriptural command in which it is said, ‘If you will to be perfect, go and sell all you have and give it to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven (Mt 19:21) . . . if, nevertheless, I am impatient, prone to anger, jealous, proud; if I become enraged when wrongs are done to me; if I am on the lookout for my own interest; if my thoughts are evil; if I do not patiently and gladly endure all that happens to me; then the renunciation and the martyrdom of the outer man will be of no benefit to me as long as the inner spirit wallows in its old and sinful ways. It will be of no value that when in the first zeal of conversion I despised the simple substance of the world, which is neither good nor bad but neutral, if I took no care to throw out at the same time the evil goods of a corrupt heart and made no effort to achieve a Godlike love, a love which is patient and kind, which is not jealous, not boastful, which does not show annoyance or is wrong-headed, which is not on the lookout for itself, which thinks no evil, which endures all and sustains all, and which finally, never allows its faithful follower to slip into the snares of sin.” (CONFERENCES, p 89)
As Cassian points out, if the only thing my ‘convert zeal’ leads me to is to value life in the Kingdom more than life in this world, I really haven’t had the change of heart (repentance) to which Christ called us. The material world is neither good nor evil – it is only what I do with it that has moral value and it is my choices which are subject to God’s judgment. However, if I fail to rid my heart of vices such as anger, pride, jealousy, then I will never be able to fulfill the Gospel commands, I will struggle to follow Christ, I will have a very hard time to do His will.
Evil such as anger, rage, hatred, lust, greed, envy – does not occur in us because of what other people do. Rather, they are in our hearts and emerge in some circumstances which reveal their existence within us. We have to chose to overcome them. Our true enemies are never the people around us, but the vices which dwell in our hearts and control how we react to others.
“A man can be harmed by another only through the causes of the passions which lie within himself. It is for this reason that God, the Creator of all and the Doctor of men’s souls, Who alone has accurate knowledge of the soul’s wounds, does not tell us to forsake the company of men; He tells us to root out the causes of evil within us and to recognize that the soul’s health is achieved not by a man’s separating himself from his fellows, but by his living the ascetic life in the company of holy men. When we abandon our brothers for some apparently good reason, we do not eradicate the motives for gloom but merely exchange them, since the sickness which lies hidden within us will show itself again in other circumstances.” (St John Cassian in CONQUERING DEPRESSION, p 20)
And he said to them, “Then are you also without understanding? Do you not see that whatever goes into a man from outside cannot defile him, since it enters, not his heart but his stomach, and so passes on?” (Thus he declared all foods clean.) And he said, “What comes out of a man is what defiles a man. For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, fornication, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a man.” (Mark 7:18-23)
Fraternized 