9/13/26 Blind Spots: Anger

0:00Welcome to Sunday Homelies with me, Father Mike Schmitz. I hope today's homelie inspires and motivates you, and I also hope that it leaves you hungry for the one who gave everything to feed you. If you want to get this, another Sunday Mass Resources sent straight to your inbox, sign up at ascensionpress.com slash Sunday, or by texting Sunday to 333-777. You can also follow or subscribe on your podcast app for weekly notifications. God bless. The Lord be with you. And with your spirit. And reading from the Holy Gospel according to Matthew. Chapter 18 verses 21 through 35. Peter approached Jesus and asked him, Lord, if my brother sins against me, how often must I forgive? As many as seven times? Jesus answered, I say to you not seven times, but 77 times. That is why the kingdom of heaven may be likened to a kingdom that decided to settle accounts with His servants.

1:00When he began the accounting, a debtor was brought before him who owed him a huge amount. Since he had no way of paying it back, his master ordered him to be sold, along with his wife, his children, and all his property and payment of the debt. At that, the servant fell down, did him homage and said, Be patient with me, and I will pay you back in full. Moved with compassion. The master of that servant let him go and forgave him the loan. When that servant had left, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a much smaller amount. He seized him, started to choke him, demanding, pay back what you owe. Falling to his knees, his fellow servant begged him, be patient with me, and I will pay you back. But he refused. Instead he had his fellow servant put in prison until he paid back the debt. Now when his fellow servants saw what had happened, they were deeply disturbed and went to their master and reported the whole affair. His master summoned him and said to him, You wicked servant, I forgave you your entire debt because you asked me to.

2:02Should you not have had pity on your fellow servant as I had pity on you? Then in anger his master handed him over to the torturers until he should pay back the whole debt. And so will my Heavenly Father do to you, unless each of you forgives your brother from your heart. The gospel of the Lord. You might never see. So unfortunately I see my physical therapist a lot. Just falling apart. But fortunately my physical therapist is awesome. And at one point she was a high school athlete. She became a college athlete, I'll bet CSS. She still is an athlete, she still competes. And one of the things she always does is she reminds me whenever all of her patients, about whenever you go into something you know is going to be hard. You know it's going to be tough, you know it's going to be a challenge that your mindset can change everything. And I had to fact check her so I looked it up a little bit and I like actually it's true.

3:04They did the study at Harvard Business School of students who had a control group when they were taking a test. Something that they knew was not only difficult but high stakes. If they had talked like talk to themselves like, okay I'm nervous, I'm stressed that's one thing. They had themselves talk to themselves and say no I'm excited. It's a high stakes test, really difficult test but I'm excited. They performed significantly better than if they just let themselves be nervous, let themselves be afraid. In fact they even done this with physical testing. For example they had some elite level cyclists, you know bicyclists. And they had to do this kind of a time trial where you had to go as far as hard as you could for as far as you possibly could. They tested it. And then they had them go back. And during that hard test where they went as hard as they could for as far as they could, they had them have this positive self-talk where this kind of a sense of they would say, okay this is hard but I can do it. Like this is tough but I've trained for this. That this is difficult but I love doing this. They performed 18% better when they had the right mindset.

4:04When they looked at it and said yes in fact that's my PT. She said okay here's a secret. Before you do something hard it's one word. Whether that be like a tough workout, whether it be like a big challenge, you know you're going into something that is going to be difficult. Just remember one word and say this one word and it changes everything. She says you're going through the hard thing just go like this, just say yes. I was like I try it. It's awesome. You should try it. It works. Even Monday morning it actually works. The alarm goes off. I sometimes say another one word but you switch it and just say yes. It actually shifts things. To look at life and say okay it's going to be hard but yes. Now I bring this up because last week we started a whole new series. Last week we had this series called Blind Spots. The idea behind this is based off Psalm 19 where the Psalmist says from hidden faults O Lord acquit me. There are some sins that we know of. There are some sins that were ashamed of.

5:04There are some sins that were just like gosh we're so embarrassed by them but there are other sins that were not embarrassed by. They're what you might call acceptable sins. The kind of sins that if you were to give an example of I went to confession and confessed X, Y and Z. They're the ones you use. Last week we talked about the acceptable sin of gossip. Gossip is we're not embarrassed by it typically. We're not ashamed of gossip but that doesn't mean it's not deadly. In fact gossip is very deadly but it's become an acceptable sin. So it's remains an invisible vice. So it's in our blind spots. And so for the next today, including today from the next five weeks we're looking at some of these blind spots. Now before we go any further I want to highlight this. Someone asked me they said okay so Father do I have to like dig up my blind spots or there are things like I don't know. These aren't the same. That's not that kind of blind spot. These are not blind spots in the sense you don't know they're there. You know they're there we just give ourselves a pass on them if that makes any sense. Like I know if I gossip I just give myself a pass because it's an acceptable sin.

6:09Today we're looking at another one. Like last week gossip is an action. You know when you do it you know when you don't do it. But there's other blind spots that aren't actions that are more attitudes. They're not just they're not decisions. They're more kind of dispositions that we approach life by. And the one we have today is the one from the first reading. It's the book of Syrac. The first line in fact Syrac writes this he says anger and wrath are hateful things but the sinner holds them tight. Today we're going to talk about anger as a blind spot sin. And again not anger like in the sense of rage like you flip tables and not anger in the sense of like you lose your temper or you have a short fuse or you just fly off the handle. Although that's real and if that's you deal with it. But that's the kind of sin that we're embarrassed by. If you lose your temper in public we feel ashamed about this. We're talking about a different kind of anger but before we look at that kind of anger I want to highlight two things quick. Number one. Emotions. In anger is an emotion.

7:11Emotions are not sins. We have to understand this. Emotions are just they just are. They're what they call they're amoral like they're neither good nor bad. So the emotion of fear of stress anxiety worry anger. It's not bad. It just is. But what we do with it is either good or bad. The second thing is this. Second thing is sometimes people you know we have negative emotions and positive emotions. I think sometimes we want to be happy so being happy means for us is I need to eliminate the negative emotions. I know a man his name is Dr. Arthur Brooks. Arthur Brooks is a he's like a happiness scientist, happiness doctor. And he says that's what people want if they think if I'm going to be happy I will only have positive emotions. I need to eliminate negative emotions but he says that is a very, very bad idea not only because it's impossible. But because negative emotions actually serve a function we need negative emotions. If you don't have any negative emotions you'd be dead. So if you didn't have the negative emotion of fear you'd walk down that dark alley that

8:12you should stay away from. That if you didn't have the negative emotion of stress in a dispassion of the test tomorrow you wouldn't study. And if we didn't have the negative emotion of anger when you saw an injustice you wouldn't be moved to take action because there are some things right there are some things we see them and they make us angry and that's good. I don't know if you've ever seen the the bumper sticker if you're not angry you're not paying attention maybe you've seen this kind of a hippies put it on the back of the car you know. And to a certain extent that's right to a certain extent that's true but we know this we know that there are things for being angry about and there's things not worth being angry about. There are things worth being angry about. Two days ago we just commemorated the 25th anniversary of terrorist attack on the United States of America. That's worth being angry about. If that anger moves us to do good it's worth being angry about. But we all know that there are things that if we're going to be honest we don't need to

9:14be angry about. I was debating whether or not I would share this but here we go. I guess it's church in this is confession. Two weeks ago two Sundays ago we had a big event over at Newman it was it was our main event. In fact it was an afternoon we had like a kind of an epic block party kind of a carnival situation so there were there was inflatables we had a bunch of food games we had cotton candy we had warm pretzels and cheese that's not really made out of cheese and then we had tons of burgers and so here's the thing whenever we grill at Newman like I'm the guy on the grill like this how it goes like I'm the I'm the spiritual father dad grills that's what goes. That's the rule and so we had a bunch of other adults helping us put on this event they they man the games the cotton candy some other things and at one point one of the adults showed up and he goes over to the grilling set his name is Brett. Brett goes over to the grilling section I'm like okay Brett so for the grilling section huh. And then Brett puts on an apron I'm like Brett's put on an apron. Then Brett takes out a hat on the hat it says meat master. I was like what is going on why is Brett.

10:18He Brett thinks he's grilling. Brett thinks he's grilling and I just I was like I didn't flip a table I didn't fly off in a rage I just I just did what we do which is like and then I want to walk around and sense of snide things who's organizing this thing who didn't tell Brett that I'm the grill master I'm the meat master you know I was basically a turd. Now I got past it but I remember looking back in this going wait a second oh my goodness there's at least four things I need to keep in mind number one we have to grill hundreds of burgers tonight it's good to have some help number two I could have been an adult I locked up to Brett who's actually another adult and said Brett we have to grill hundreds of burgers we're both assigned to the grill how do you want to make this work. Number three this is the worst part Brett and I are actually friends. I got hung out at his house we've shared a sauna together like Brett is the most casual

11:20laid back easygoing kind man I could have said hey Brett my friend we have to grill hundreds of burgers together we're both assigned to the grill how do you want this to work out and the fourth thing I could have done is realized it's only burgers there are some things some things are not worth getting angry about and this is what Ben Sirak is talking about in the first reading it's what Sirak say he says anger and wrath are hateful things but the sinner holds them tight he's not talking about rage he's not talking about people seething he's not talking about passion he's talking about something else says the sinner holds them tight what he's describing is what we might call an angry person like you know you know what we know angry people what he's talking about is this subtle chronic disposition towards life which is not strictly speaking in action but it's an attitude it's the kind of person who you say well there's there's something always wrong isn't there is always something wrong it's kind of person when you meet them and you before you see them before

12:24they come over or you go over to the house you kind of have to brace yourself feel like which version are we going to get are they we're going to get the fun version of them or we can relax okay good or we're going to get the version where okay they're angry again something's always wrong we have to be on eggshells you know it's like a person who they walk into a room and they start aggressively cleaning like they're picking up stuff as if each item has personally offended them or maybe they're cooking in the kitchen and long before you can smell the meal you can hear them banging away slamming the covers bang the pots on the table like what is going on in there or the kind of person if you've ever seen someone fold their clothes as if each t-shirt has murdered their entire family you're like what what is happening no there's just there's just something's always wrong there's just there's just angry in all those things of course are just things that have to get done you have to do your laundry you have to pick up you have to eat or another example is that person if everyone else on the road is always in the wrong maybe anger is one

13:27of your issues if every person on the road falls into one of the categories they're either a moron or they're crazy guy driving so slow what a moron look how fast he's going it guys crazy like maybe it's possible that the guilty one is the one in the driver's seat you know it's the kind of it's kind of person who and say well you know if I'm not happy no one gets to be happy and I imagine pips of people are like I'm not like that like okay how about if I'm not happy everyone gets to hear about it that might be more us when we hold on again the anger and wrath are hateful things but the sinner holds on tight there's something always wrong if I'm not happy everyone gets to hear about it no of course someone could say what father I need to be me like try just fake it try just pretend like everything's fine I say no but I would also say this there's typically one reason why people are angry there's definitely one reason why people are not happy yes there is sorrow in this world there's grief in

14:28this world there is there are horrible things in this world but I think when it comes to the kind of person that just nothing's ever good enough something's always wrong I think the main reason if there's one reason why people are not happy and it's because they don't let themselves be happy there's a reason why so many people are angry why because I want to be remember the the blind spot remember the blind spot of anger is this subtle chronic disposition it's an attitude towards life and the attitude is this I wanted things to be other than they are I wanted things to be different from the problem is traffic the problem is the mess the problem is other people no this is the thing your problem isn't traffic your problem isn't work your problem isn't the mess your problem isn't other people your problem isn't your circumstances your problem is reality my problem isn't that things keep going wrong my problem is that things keep going not the way I want

15:31my problem is that reality refuses to consult me before it happens and the reality is that reality wins 100% of the time I used to think that getting old was the cure I used to think that just you know age out of that kind of thing you used to think like you know you get old you're just like it's fine sit down Moroccan chair everything's fine until I met old people for real and you realize oh there's no cure because you get old you just have more creatives yeah get old there's more shut-ups you know there's more what-ups I would say this you get old all you have is more reality there's more things wrong with less chance of fixing them and yet something has to get fixed in all of our hearts if we hold on to this blind spot of anger Syraccozanda he says can anyone nourish anger and expect healing something has to get fixed in our hearts

16:36so what's the remedy that's a question what's the remedy if something's always wrong what's the remedy there's a priest's name it's father Romano Gordini died a number of years ago but he wrote a great book it's one of my favorite books of all time it's it's living the virtue that lead virtues that lead you to God and in this book he spelled out the two remedies for this chronic blind spot of anger he said it's these two things acceptance and patience now when we hear acceptance sometimes we think acceptance you mean resignation like just accept him and just like give up he said no he said Gordini said this he said acceptance is the necessary starting point for any real change before any real effort for any attempt to change what's wrong I have to first have acceptance of what is said I first have to accept reality your own that of other people and of the time in which you live so I have to accept wow I wish I was different but

17:37I'm not I have to accept it in order to become someone God wants me to be I want to love this person in my life I wish they were different but I have to first accept the fact they're not different then I can start loving them I have to accept that no this is the time that I live this is the age which I live these are the realities in which I live and I have to have a posture towards this in other words it's this in other words the posture is this I have to say yes to life in order to let go of that anger the first thing I have to do I have to say yes to life I have to say yes to the fact that reality is real before I can do anything with it I have to stop presenting what is true so that we can begin responding to what's true I mean it's the person who gets a flat tire on the side of the road and what's the temptation the temptation is just like hit the steering wheel get outside kick the tire complain about the fact I'm going to be late now instead of I don't know changing the tire it's it's it's it's going back to your apartment

18:37your dorm tonight and being like oh telling all your roommates well I've got I've got a big test tomorrow I've got a big test tomorrow I've got a paper tomorrow I got a big thing in just repeating it over and over again versus like actually doing the test taking this time to study writing the paper it's happened to me like this twice this happened to be in the last year where I was making coffee and I put the coffee pot and thing all the grounds and everything set the button walked away I could smell coffee coming from the kitchen I was like this is great I walk into the kitchen and unfortunately what happened was I did not put the craft all the way into the thing so coffee was being made just wasn't going into the craft it was going on to the counter all over the all over the floor I walked in in disbelief how does this happen I didn't believe it I was outraged and I stood there in disbelief and outrage and funny no amount of outrage put one drop back into the craft that was a moment of just okay yes this is reality let me do something so when someone is late and you're saying there's sitting going like they should be here they should be here they

19:42should be here yes they should be here but the question is no longer should they be here yes they should the question is now what is my response to the fact that they're not now none of this is saying this is good all of it all it's saying is this is real and this is the Christian lens this is where the Christian lens is so important this is where we have to look at this we look at this and say okay this is God's prophet and this is God's goodness because all of this we're talking about tonight all of this has to do with God why because every moment belongs to him all of reality is his that's under his dominion and so the angry person keeps demanding a different reality but the accepting person begins working with the reality that God has given that's called patience to say that yes to reality that's acceptance to begin working with the reality that God's given that's patience without that the blind spot of anger is so deadly especially for us who I mean especially for

20:44church people why not just because we know better but because we've been we've been touched by grace think of the gospel today here's this man who owes this massive amount this huge debt he could never pay back in multiple lifetimes and the master says I release you his his life is completely changed he was dead now he's alive and the next thing what's he do the next thing he does is he meets someone who owes him a much smaller amount refuses to forgive that's us when we hold on to anger when anger in wrath are hateful things when we hold them tight it's as if we've never experienced what love really is like it's as if we never experienced grace one of the reasons why anger can't be the blind spot of us is because it means we're living as if God's grace has had no effect on us

21:49but to be touched by God's grace means we have to then give grace to be moved by God's patience means we have to be patient in fact where Dean he says that he says God is the preeminent patient one I love why he said this he said God's the preeminent patient and why he says because God created this whole universe God continues to sustain this universe and God does not grow weary of a moment of it God doesn't get tired of keeping this universe in God doesn't get frustrated with us but again and again every day he says again sunrise again new day again and this is so good because I've got as the preeminent patient one with with each of us he says it's okay again I'm not tired of helping you I'm not tired of loving you we can resist or change many things according to our wishes but basically we have to accept reality as it comes to us and to accept that and to live

22:50accordingly is patience and this is the last thing the blind spot of anger is so deadly but acceptance and patience are so powerful to live like this is to continually say yes to life and this is the last word in quote he said he who does not love life has no patience with it he who does not love life has no patience with it and in this case what does he mean what does he mean by life he means all of it the ups and the downs I love life the lafters and the tears we love life the the rest and the chores we love life the day of rest on Sunday and the work of Monday the the tidy spaces in the home and the messes in the home the when you're holding your child and they're thus laughing and smiling and googling and giggling and the kid who won't stop crying

23:52like all of it to say yes to all of it means that's I now I'm free to love life and I'm free to not cling to anger I'm free to stop presenting reality I'm free to accept reality to have the patience to love and to be cheerful when reality is not what I want to live like this is the freedom of being able to say yes to life