The only way to avoid the sin, then, is the one that St. James gives. Be slow to anger. Don't trust it, however sure you may be that it advises you rightly. It is a fool; don't listen to it. Wait till you get cool, till reason can have fair play.
I say this is the only way you can avoid this sin. I mean that nothing else will cure you of it unless you do this. Confession and Communion, prayer, penance, and other things, will help you; but this is indispensable. You know when you are under the influence of anger well enough. When you are, hold your tongue and hold your hand. You may have to do or say something afterwards, but very seldom there and then. God will not be likely to give you grace that is not needed; and you will not have the grace to do what is right when your duty is to do nothing, and wait till the temptation passes by. Remember that you are a fool when you are angry, if you do not want to act like one and be sorry for it afterwards.
Fifth Sunday after Easter.
Epistle.
St. James i. 22-27.
Dearly beloved:
Be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves. For if a man be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he shall be compared to a man beholding his natural countenance in a glass. For he beheld himself, and went his way, and presently forgot what manner of man he was. But he that hath looked into the perfect law of liberty, and hath continued in it, not becoming a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work: this man shall be blessed in his deed. And if any man think himself to be religious, not bridling his tongue, but deceiving his own heart, this man's religion is vain. Religion pure and unspotted with God and the Father, is this: to visit the fatherless and widows in their tribulation; and to keep one's self undefiled from this world.
Gospel.
St. John xvi. 23-30.
At that time:
Jesus said to his disciples: Amen, amen I say to you, if you ask the Father anything in my name, he will give it you. Hitherto you have not asked anything in my name. Ask, and you shall receive: that your joy may be full. These things have I spoken to you in proverbs. The hour cometh when I will no more speak to you in proverbs, but will show you plainly of the Father. In that day you shall ask in my name: and I say not to you, that I will ask the Father for you. For the Father himself loveth you, because you have loved me, and have believed that I came forth from God. I came forth from the Father, and am come into the world; again I leave the world, and I go to the Father. His disciples say to him: Behold now thou speakest plainly, and speakest no proverb. Now we know that thou knowest all things, and that for thee it is not needful that any man ask thee. In this we believe that thou camest forth from God.