Praying with anger
Brendan McManus SJ :: Some situations in life are so patently unfair that they stick in your craw and cause a lot of righteous anger.
St Ignatius’ Three Degrees of Humility
Some situations in life are so patently unfair that they stick in your craw and cause a lot of righteous anger. This burns like molten lava in your heart, is a source of tremendous volatile energy that is very hard to control, never mind being reasonable or discerning about. The energy can be a positive force for rectifying injustice, but also can become obsessive and destructive. Often, it is a personal, procedural or institutional injustice that is beyond your control and, despite your best efforts, has to be endured. This is ‘The third degree’ In Ignatian language, the volatile and excruciating pain of putting up with unavoidable injustice and having to find a way to live with it, possibly even embrace it.
Ignatius Loyola has a meditation in his Spiritual Exercises that touches on this point called the ‘Three degrees of humility’, which aims to bring us closer to Christ and test our freedom, especially in dealing with unfairness and people’s perceptions about ‘suffering through it’. The first degree means doing our duty in following God, the minimum. The second ‘more perfect’ way is being free enough to put ourselves out there. The third and ‘highest’ way is to follow Christ more closely even assuming insults, injustice, and contempt as a result. This imitation of Christ, or ‘being a fool for Christ’, means identifying with some of the totally unfair and rough treatment that Jesus himself endured in the Passion. This is the extreme level of human experience that Jesus himself, the total innocent, endured out of love for us. He knew the greatest injustice of being scapegoated, being dumped on, harshly judged and unfairly treated to the point of a violent death. And he bore it all silently, accepting of it and trying to find God in it. Ultimately, he rose above it, transformed it. This is frightening, to totally step out of the boat and trust, especially to endure injustice and insults which goes against the grain.
It’s not an easy place to be, however. It demands tremendous humility and courage, to face into the storm of unjust treatment and unavoidable suffering, seeking to find God there. The emotions are the hardest to deal with here, unfair and unjust treatment natural causes anger that wants to address or reverse the situation. Let’s be honest, it’s often a desire for revenge that can consume you with rage. It’s like holding a red-hot coal, ready to throw, but which burns your own hand. When there is nothing you can do, the anger still rages, and you are left in this terrible situation of swallowing it or managing it somehow.
This is where real prayer comes in, not just a pious thought or a papering over, but a real struggle with the ‘anger demon’ and its volatile energy. It is so easy to fall into anger, reaction and extraction, instinctively wanting to rid oneself of it and not deal with it. Having to face it and get through the anger demands great freedom and resolve and is only possible with God’s help and some friends and community support. Sometimes you may need professional help too.
The first thing is to name it accurately, identifying that there is no way of resolving it (i.e. having taken all other possible measures) and accepting that is has to be dealt with. This finding a way through and hopefully getting some peace is the ‘higher road’ of the third degree, believing that God is in it somehow. The next step is to turn it into a prayer directly, praying with the seemingly intractable problem and bringing God’s grace directly to bear on it. Seeing yourself as following Christ through his crucible of suffering is consoling, as is watching what he does to manage this situation: he firstly prays for release “Take this cup away from me (Luke 22:42)” and only then gives himself totally to God, “Into your hands I commend my spirit (Psalm 31:5)”. This is the most difficult prayer of abandonment, accepting that you are at the end of your own abilities and begging God for help to get through this crucible of suffering. This combination of admitting vulnerability and humbly asking God for help seems to work.
It can be helpful to ask yourself the question “how does God see you in this”? Often, we feel aggrieved and ‘sinned against’, but the reality is that we are ‘forgiven sinners’, already forgiven through Christ. Thus, reframing the issue in terms of what God sees is liberating, it takes a divine perspective and enables you to rise above our own limited one. Realising you are forgiven defuses our own ‘righteousness’, brings about humility and often allows you to escape from our own demons and find a way to forgive others.
Another technique Ignatius recommends for tricky discernment is to get some distance on it by thinking what advice you would give to a friend facing this same situation. Another is imagining that you are at the point of death and which option you would like to choose for posterity, i.e., the long term or divine view.
Consider how Jesus has been through the mill already, he has survived insults, torture and violence resulting in his death. He has overcome death and yet bears the wounds; how would he want you to pray through this situation? Here is a possible process:
1. Clearly identify the issue for yourself, name the injustice and your raw emotions. Give it all to God, asking for the grace to be able to find a way through.
2. Remind yourself that you are not alone, especially that Jesus has been here before you.
3. Find a verse from the Psalms or Gospels to connect with Jesus (‘Into your hands Lord I commend my spirit’, ‘Why have you forsaken me?”)
4. Imagine yourself having a personal conversation with the risen, wounded Jesus, don’t hold anything back.
5. Hear what Jesus says to you, hear his wisdom from a person who has been to that very place.
6. Realise that you are forgiven, Jesus has given his very life to free you. How does that change your perspective?
7. Work out what God is calling you to. What is it you have to let go of?
8. Only after you have reached a place of peace or balance, ask if there are any other steps you need to take in justice.
