One of the most confessed sins is anger: “I got angry with my mom or dad”, “I got angry with my best friend”, “I got angry with my sibling”, “I got angry with my staff”, or “I get angry whenever I drive on EDSA”. The list can go on and on and on.

Anger, per se, is not a sin because it is an emotion. In fact, when one sees injustice, waste of resources, someone being hurt or bullied, someone being taken advantaged of, or when you love and were betrayed, it is only natural to get angry. 

On the other hand, it becomes a sin, in three ways:

• First, there is the desire for revenge – an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. There are two realities about this most natural instinct.
  • When will the anger stop? When will there be a “satisfaction point”?
  • When we do revenge, two people get hurt: the person to whom the revenge is directed to and the person who does the revenge
    
• Second, when anger is harboured too long, it already affects the heart. Just watch the words, the attitude, the disposition of an angry person, it is all about the people that hurt him and her, how wrongly he or she has been treated, how unfair life is, and even “where is God in all of this…”.
  
  In other words, that person cannot move on in life. It is always a case of living in the past. 
  
• Third, when relationships are affected. Who wants to deal with an angry person. In other words, the anger is just thrown to the people around the angry person. Who then, would like to mingle with an angry person? Certainly, an angry person is a lonely person.

In this Mass, may we have the strength to forgive the people that have hurt us and may we have the humility to ask for forgiveness.