I think we can all learn from this:
Taken from
spiritdaily.com/crosscorrection.htm
…What it means is that to feel anger is not a sin; what is a sin is to handle it in the wrong way.
It’s natural to get angry when evil is done! But when we react wrongfully, we just enhance the venom. We add barbs to the stinger. Fighting fire with fire only doubles the heat. Don’t let evil engage you!
Yet we live at a time when this is rampant. Everyone is being harsh with one another. We live in a “culture of criticality.” Or we are just dealt with unfairly. I remember one time several years ago when a woman sponsoring an event literally fabricated – not exaggerated, but fabricated – words that she then attributed to me, destroying a friendship.
It was painful and the devil was clearly at work but it would have been even more painful had I attacked her back, in like fashion. As it was, I was wrong for even letting it bother me.
Angry? Yes. But anger works to the right way only when it leads to correction. It’s what we do with our anger. I should have contacted her bishop.
If you see something wrong, step back from it, disengage your emotions, pray about how to approach it, and then seek, with love, to correct it.
This is a cross we are all called to carry. We are called not to criticize or gossip, but to correct with love. That removes the sting. Is it difficult? Sometimes it seems impossible! But we are called to do it and we are called to do it at times when we don’t want to – when we would rather fight fire with fire or simply be silent. For the other extreme is letting everything go by us without doing anything about it.
Christians have a duty to “oppose evil with good, lies with the truth, and hatred with love,” Pope Benedict XVI said in his Ash Wednesday homily.
But it is in the way we do it – and we react in the wrong way when we let pride speak for us.
When something is really irksome, ask the Holy Spirit what part of your own pride it may be attaching itself to. You’ll solve the irritation!
Look at Jesus. It’s strange this day how so many have made Jesus into something that strays so far from Scripture. In the modern Church, there are many who portray Him as someone Who tolerated anything. They portray Him as so loving that nothing mattered. And nothing could be farther from the truth.
Look back at Scripture and notice how many times Jesus was admonishing!
But also see the way His admonishment – however firm – was done with love.
That’s the difference between criticism and correction.
Negativity drains energy while the power of love (and humbleness) sends correction.
How powerful that is!
Correction is seeking to make something good. It is responding to anger in the correct way. It is using love to “attack” a negative situation.
The key is love. Love is a shield against evil and allows us to say something without offending. If we love, we correct
