I enjoyed the examples in this book and found some helpful tidbits. I especially liked the discussions on meekness and its power. Here are a few favorite quotes:
A Christian psycho-therapist,
Craig, points out that “Anger is always an attachment to a model of where you
wish you were other than where you are, or how you wish it were other than the
way it is. The minute you stop having models, your anger goes.”
By contrast, if you trace angry
emotions back to the trigger point, you will often find a sense of weakness as
part of the problem.
This analysis of anger as related
to feelings of weakness can be found in a seminal way in the theories of the
famous Dutch-born American psychologist, Conrad Baars. He believed that if the
little child feels unloved because of frustration of basic physical and
emotional needs, there is anguish in the heart. Anger is a basic response to
being too weak to get what is necessary from one’s parents. It recurs later in
life in over-reaction to any, even minor, situations of frustration.
St. Thomas Aquinas commented on
Matt 11:29, “I am meek and humble of heart.” He wrote: “The whole New Law
consists of two things: Meekness (or gentleness) and humility. Through
meekness, a man is rightly related to his neighbor (see Psalm 131:1). Through
humility, he is rightly related to himself and God (see Isaiah 66:2). Therefore
humility makes man capable of (receiving) God.
The 18th century doctor
of the Catholic Church, St. Alphonsus Liguori, was of an extremely angry
temperament himself. He wrote: “We cannot be free of the first motions of
anger; we have to moderate them. This is done by “Meekness, the virtue of the
lamb . . .”
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