Dedication
of St. John Lateran.
The flight from
We have all been intimidated by an angry person at one time or another. Most of us let angry people have their way rather than calmly and coolly confronting their anger. Mary Jo Copeland, the founder of Caring and Sharing Hands, talks about the abusive anger of her father, who would leave her quivering with fear in the corner as he beat his wife, sometimes very severely. Emotional and physical abuse in families is common in both poor and well to do families. Both men and women can be abusers. The bully, the angry boss, the demanding neighbor, and the touchy friend all use anger to control and to get what they want, as others sink into the background out of fear, or just go away because they don’t want to deal with a person who is emotionally out of control. Inappropriate, uncontrolled anger can instill great fear and inflict great injury.
“Jesus found in the
temple area those who sold oxen, sheep, and doves, as well as the money
changers seated there. He made a whip
out of cords and drove them all out of the temple area, with the sheep and the
oxen. He spilled the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables,
and to those who sold doves he said,
‘Take these out of here, and stop making my Father’s house a
marketplace.’ His disciples recalled the
words of Scripture, ‘Zeal for you house will consume me.’
Jesus was angry. Can
you imagine what those standing around thought when he made a whip out of rope
and actually drove people and animals out of the temple area? Anger is a gift from God. We may have trouble dealing with an intense
and angry image of Jesus because we associate anger with a rage filled father
or mother, a belligerent boss, or a cursing neighbor or associate. I had a very
angry father. He had a very hard life as
an immigrant. That is not an excuse, only an attempt to understand. Whenever someone gets angry with me I still turn
stone cold on the inside, as I did when I was a little child. . The
teachers we have make all the difference in the world in understanding the
emotional gifts that God has given us.
What would it be like if we learned about our sexuality from a pornographic movie or from a prostitute? Someone reminded me again that the primary ways that we express intimacy is with our hearts, our ears, our speech, our minds and our sense of touch. Mindless, heartless, speechless sex will never help us understand and enjoy intimate love and treasure God’s great gift of sexuality. The teachers we have make all the difference in the world in understanding God’s gift of human sexuality. When loving, tender parents are our teachers the result will be very different from the understanding we get from the world of casual sex and pornography.
In today’s gospel Jesus teaches us about the gift of anger. He teaches us that there are times when anger is appropriate. He teaches us that there are values worth defending with the courage and strength that anger gives to our conviction. The stance that Jesus takes in the temple reminds us that there are issues around the sacredness of God, human life and death, justice and peace that need to be fueled by the outrage and strength that the gift of appropriate anger instills.
I believe in tolerance. I also believe in non-violence. I also believe that because many of us have had bad teachers and bad experiences in dealing with anger, we either blow up in ways that cause further damage to our sense of appropriate anger, or we avoid anger at all cost and simply let evil continue unchallenged. We may be afraid to let other people see that we are angry, or even to let ourselves experience our own anger. We may not even want others to see that we have convictions on important values and issues in order to avoid dealing with anger in ourselves and in others.
As we celebrate the feast of the Basilica of St. John
Lateran, the Pope’s Cathedral, we are reminded that we are the