`Geronda, I want to get rid of anger. I see it is inappropriate for a monk to get angry.`
`Anger, pure anger is a power of the soul. If the gentle is aided to progress spiritually by the gentleness he has, the angry one is aided even more by this power of the soul which is anger; it is enough if this power of anger is directed against one`s own passions and against the cunning one.
If he doesn`t use it in this way, the devil will take advantage of it. The gentle one, if he doesn`t struggle to gain more manhood, can`t make any leaps, while the angry one if he takes a decision full of manhood and turns his anger against evil, rises up on the spot. That is why the leaps in spiritual life are made by those who had a little bit of madness.
`So of I understand it well, I have to be angry on the devil and not on the nuns.`
`At start you get angry on others; afterwards if you struggle you will get angry on the devil and in the end to get angry only on your old ego, on your passions. Try therefore to get angry only on the devil and on your passions, not on the nuns.
`My anger and stubbornness are they childish passions?`
`No, my blessed one. A child has the right to get angry, to kick out of his legs, to cry out: `I don`t want it, I don`t want it! But when he grows up he must get rid of these and keep only the childish simplicity and innocence and he should not keeo the childish foolishness. You see until where some people go. When they get angry they hit their head on the walls. Fortunately God took care to make the man with a strong head and this is how nothing happens to him. Others tear their clothes. There was somebody who tore every day a shirt because of his anger. He turned it into pieces. He relieved his nerves on the shirt instead on reliving them on others.
`Does this mean that anger is a kind of outburst?
`Yes, but isn`t it better if the man outbursts against his old ego instead of doing this against others?`
Excerpt from Passions and virtues – Pious Paisios the Athonite, Evanghelismos Publishing.
