The capital vice of anger that makes human relationships unbearable and heavy, which is capable of transforming people in the workplace or in the family into brutal individuals capable of offenses, demolitions of the other or even gratuitous violence was at the center of the reflection of Pope Francis at today's audience. After having reviewed other capital vices in previous weeks, this time he focused on this dark attitude that modifies "the person dominated by anger and is recognized by the movements of his body, from aggression, from panting breath, from the scowling and frowning look. In its most acute manifestation, anger is a vice that leaves no respite".
Francis told that there "are men who hold back anger at work, proving calm and composed, but once at home they become unbearable for wife and children. Anger is a rampant vice: it is capable of taking away sleep and making us constantly plot in the mind, without being able to find a barrier to reasoning and thoughts. It is a vice destructive of human relationships".
At the origin of this evil would be "the inability to accept the diversity of the other, especially when his life choices diverge from ours. It doesn't stop at a person's wrong behaviors, but throws everything into the cauldron: it's the other, the other as it is, the other as such that provokes anger and resentment. You start to hate the tone of his voice, the banal daily gestures, his ways of thinking and feeling. When the relationship reaches this level of degeneration, clarity has already been lost".
What to do? Are there remedies for this path of self-destruction? Pope Bergoglio admits the difficulty in modifying certain sides of character but a different reading of events through forgiveness and acceptance of others for what they are is always possible. A difficult thing but achievable with good will. "In the "Our Father" Jesus makes us pray for our human relationships which are a minefield: a plane that never stays in perfect balance. In life we have to deal with debtors who are defaulters towards us; as certainly we have not always loved everyone in the right measure. We did not return the love that someone deserved. We are all sinners with accounts in the red, and therefore we all need to learn to forgive. Men do not stay together if they do not also practice the art of forgiveness, as much as this is humanly possible. What contrasts anger is benevolence, breadth of heart, meekness, patience".
Of course, not everything that comes from anger is wrong. "Passions to some extent are unconscious: they happen, they are life experiences. We are not responsible for anger in its rise, but always in its development. And sometimes it is good that anger is vented in the right way. If a person never got angry, if he did not get indignant in front of an injustice, if in front of the oppression of a weak person he did not feel something trembling in his viscera, then it would mean that he is not human, much less Christian".
Even Pope Francis is not immune to losing his temper and bordering on anger from time to time. It caused a stir the video recorded three years ago, in St. Peter's Square, when in front of a Chinese faithful who asked him about China he had a reaction for which Francis then had to publicly apologize at the Angelus, a few days later. He took, in fact, to slapping the hand of the woman who behind the barriers looked at him bewildered. "Even I sometimes lose patience, I apologize for the bad example of yesterday," said the pontiff afterwards. On another occasion he admitted to having lost his temper when a woman, during an audience, asked him to bless her little dog contained in a purse. Then the episode was partially corrected by the woman in question who called into question explained to the Messenger that things were not really like that, she had only reached out to touch and caress the Pope's hand when a Chihuahua popped out of the bag that startled Bergoglio.
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