Things that hurt the soul and spirit.

These lines are from a hymn we sang this morning at Morning Prayer:

Lord, make our hearts and bodies whole

lest earth’s enticements snare the soul.

Lest anger wound our inmost parts,

resentment hurt our fragile hearts.     (From a 6^th Century hymn translated by Thomas Cooper)

Three points:

1.       There is an unavoidable connection between materialism or the search for pleasure on the one hand, and the health of the soul on the other hand. Pope Francis has had a lot to say about this over the past year.

2.       Anger is toxic and destructive, inflicting the spirit of the one who hangs on to anger. Even if no one else is hurt by my anger, I am hurting myself both spiritually and physically.

3.       The same thing goes for resentments, which are actually subtle forms of anger.  I have found that taking time every now and then to list people and situations that I resent and then asking the Lord to heal the resentment does me a lot of good. Unacknowledged resentments can be like a hidden cancer consuming the better parts of our nature.

From my daily readings II: anger

I'm reading the homilies on John's Gospel by St. John Chrysostom, and I came across this passage about anger and what it does to a person:

Nothing is more shameful than a countenance ablaze with anger, nothing more disfigured. . . . for just as a noisome odor is given off when mud is stirred up, so when the soul is disturbed by anger great impropriety and unpleasantness will result.

. . .  if you parry reviling with reviling,you have kindled the blaze still more.  (A modern variation on this is, "It's the second statement that starts the argument."

. . . he who indulges in anger . . . already begins to pay the penalty for his action, by introducing into his inmost thoughts a certain unceasing rest and persistent distress all through the night and all through the day.

So, questions of the day: Do you find this to be true in your life? And if so, what are you going to do about it?