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Desert Fathers And Mothers On Anger And Community

Desert Fathers And Mothers On Anger And Community

Last updated on: October 27, 2026 at 12:40 pm by Henry Karlson

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Desert Fathers And Mothers On Anger And Community 2026-10-27T12:40:53-05:00 Henry Karlson

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Fra Angelica: Scenes From The Lives Of The Desert Fathers / Wikimedia Commons

The desert fathers and mothers often reminded each other against the dangers of anger, telling each other how their anger will lead them to act poorly. “An elder said, ‘Strife delivers a man to anger, anger to blindness, and blindness makes him work all manner of evil.’”[1] We need to find balance in our lives. We must strive to be charitable to all people, lifting them up, but we must do so without ignoring the expectations of justice, and with it, what we need to do to help make for a more just world. Ignoring grave injustices is not charitable, either to those who suffer from such injustice, but also to those who commit them, because those who commit them will eventually have to face the consequences of their actions, and the less they have to deal with, the better it will be for them.

Justice and mercy should always go together. When we look for justice in the world, when we look to promote the ways of justice, we must always be flexible in the way we deal with injustices; we need to deal with each situation separately, always making sure we do so, not with some sort of legalistic vengeance, but with mercy. Simplistic notions of retribution, such as an eye for an eye, does not promote true justice, as all it does is cause more suffering in the world. What we need is not retribution, but ways to help heal the harm which has been done, both to the one who has suffered some injustice, but also to the one who committed it. We need to embrace the way of restorative justice. Sadly, we tend to confuse retribution, revenge, with justice, and as a result, what we do tends to make things worse, not better, when we say we promote “law and order.”

It is always better to build each other up, to help each other become better, than it is to strike out at those who make us angry. “One of the fathers said, ‘A harsh word makes the good bad, but a good [word] benefits everybody.’”[2] We are made better by being gracious with each other because we are interdependent with each other; we are connected with each other, so what affects one of us has some effect on the rest of us. We are not mere individuals without any connection that links us together. To be a person is to transcend individuality and find ourselves through our relations with others; it is through our personal existence we find we do not exist independent from others, but interdependent with them. This is usually forgotten when we think of justice in the retributive sense, and when we do that, we fail to see how we are going to be adversely affected by act of retribution because what diminishes one of us diminishes us all. The more we try to punish someone, making them suffer as a result of our anger, the more we will find we lose a part of ourselves as well. This is not to say, in our mercy, we will should not stop to those causing problems; we might even have to do things which will appear to others as being a form of retributive punishment, as we will do the same thing as those who simply engage retributive justice will do, but the reality is that our intention will affect the outcome of our actions. Both a doctor and a torturer might end up amputating an arm, but their aims, the way they do it, and the end result of their actions, will greatly differ; the doctor will save the person’s life, making it better, while the torturer will make it that much worse, as the person will suffer an unnecessary loss.

Those who are angry, those who want to simply punish someone without any concern of the welfare of the person they punish, might end up improving the common good because they will have put an end to some injustice in the world. But the common good would be even greater if the person who is being stopped can also be corrected and turned back towards doing what is good and just. The interdependent nature of society suggests society needs and the people in it need each other. When society loses someone, everyone suffers from that loss. This is one of the reasons why the death penalty, however much anger and the desire for retribution might suggest it, must be rejected, because society loses the potential good which remains in the person it executes.

To truly seek justice, we must engage prudence, understanding justice is about making things right, and not just about punishing those who have done wrong. Irrational anger suggests the way to make things right is to hurt those who have angered us, and, because of the pleasure we receive when we strike out in this way, we end up confusing such pleasure as proof that what we do is just. It is not. Many things give us momentary pleasure which prove to be wrong, which is certainly the case when we give in to irrational anger. Yes, we will likely give in to it many times in our lives, but after we do so, we can look back and see the kind of harm we have caused, both to others, but also to ourselves. Obviously, not all kinds of anger are equal, and not all kinds of actions we do out of anger are equal. Often, there are reasons to be angry, just reasons, but we should respond to those reasons rationally, not letting anger take control of us and what we do. When we know what is causing us to be angry, we will have a better understanding of what we need to do in order to have our anger subside, which is what we need to do if we are to find ourselves returning to the peace which Christ tells us to pursue. Anger, by itself, grants us no such wisdom, which is why we must not let it control us. On the other hand, we must not think if we ever grow angry, and with it, tempted to do things which we know are best not to do, that such a temptation shows proves we have lost our spiritual center. Rather, when we get angry, we find ourselves being tested, and what we do with that anger will help shape who and what we become. The more we resist our worst impulses, the more firm our resolution will be in the future:

One of the fathers said, “Unless a tree is blown this way and that by the wind, it neither grows up nor puts down a root. Likewise , a monk – unless he is tempted and prevails, he does not become firmly established.”[3]

It is best not to grow angry, but, due to the injustices in the world, and the way we often find ourselves being frustrated by them throughout our lives, this is nearly impossible. In some ways, we can even say it is right and just to be angry at injustice, but we should let such anger encourage is to pursue justice, which anger does not know how to do. This is why we should not let such anger take control of us. Rather, we must take control of it. If there is something which we are justly angry about, the anger should inspire us to discern what we can do that will best rectify the situation. Anger can easily blind us, but it can also enlighten us, showing us when something is wrong; but, once we know something is wrong, it is imperative we deal with the problem in a just fashion. If we don’t, we risk doing all kinds of evil, establishing new kinds of injustice, in return.

[1] The Book of Elders. Sayings of the Desert Fathers. The Systematic Collection. trans. John Wortley (Collegeville, MN: Cistercian Publications, 2012), 186 ( N 634).

[2] The Book of Elders. Sayings of the Desert Fathers. The Systematic Collection, 186 ( Macarius 39).

[3] The Book of Elders. Sayings of the Desert Fathers. The Systematic Collection, 187 ( N 396).

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