I brought my heart full of fury to Mass and left it there

An undated side view of pews seen inside of the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Albany, NY. (The Evangelist file photo)

Small sparks of feeling that become all-consuming conflagrations can happen at any time, even, sadly, as one is preparing for Mass.

I write, of course, from experience.

The details aren’t important. Life is hard, sometimes. Living with others, even when we love and value them, can still be a challenge. Stupid arguments encourage thoughtless pronouncements that turn seeming scud missiles — destructive enough — into H-bombs, where exteriors look unharmed while inside there is startling, shriveling death.

It doesn’t matter what starts it, a hard word, or a headline: suddenly one feels a kind of incandescent fury that is probably all out of proportion to the case, but for one reason or another (and our “reasons” can seem ridiculous unless we’re willing to chase them down our peculiar rabbit-holes of mind and memory) we cannot tamp it down. We are like little arsonists, too enamored of our teeming flames; we want to let them go wild.

Perhaps your mileage is different; perhaps your personal pilot light only flames when you’re looking to make popcorn, and has no “flip your lid” setting. If so, congratulations — you’re probably not a member of my tribe, and are blessed.

I don’t often bring my livid guts to Mass, but it happened recently, to my regret. I offered them, racing and blood-red, to Jesus as soon as I hit the pew (and it DID immediately help!), but my preoccupied prayer continued all the way to the Sign of Peace. By then, thankfully, I was able to offer good will with an authentic heart, determined to make my further amends as soon as possible.

This is how the prayer went: Lord, because you are both fully human and fully divine, you understand the experience of mortal outrage — how quickly it can arise, how easily it may be sustained and how efficiently it can grow deep and deadly roots within us. I come to you now, bearing a heart full of anger and realizing that however just or unjust this feeling may be, it is far too much for me to carry.

Receive my rage, Lord; it is doing me no good.

I surrender to you all of my clanging fury over (this situation), trusting that you will temper whatever righteousness is there with Triune balms of mercy, wisdom and purpose, and that you will saturate the falsehoods I have quite naturally fed into this fiery wrath with your humbling truth.

Help me to remember that when you showed your outrage toward the merchants and moneychangers debasing the Temple, you did so with a purity of intention (and from a place of authority), that I can never begin to possess, no matter how justified my ire may seem.

Help me to remember that the bigger and stormier my anger feels, the smaller and more regrettable my words and my actions will become, tempting me toward sins of spite, malice and thoughtless cruelty. Help me to recall St. Catherine of Siena’s warning that such is a “foretaste of Hell.”

Help me to understand what complexities of my own mind and soul have contributed to this surging vehemence, that I may finally exhale and find some grace for its object, and for myself, too, because we do not, cannot, make sense of all we do and feel.

It is said “the self is more distant than any star,” and you alone understand fully the little mysteries within that you have permitted to form us, the little buttons that can set us off so easily, and then entrench us in hostility.

Turn my mind, please, toward the better moments; help me to remember small actions of kindness — even if I don’t want to be generous enough, or real enough, to call them “good” just yet. If such memories serve up a dollop of shame on my part, I’ll take it.

Better to be ashamed of my jagged rancor than to forget moments that inspired hope, or warm gratitude, or even love. Keep helping me, Lord. Help me to get to the other side of this deadly feeling! Amen.

The Mass is the most powerful prayer we possess, and I believe that at the moment of Consecration the veil between Heaven and Earth is at its thinnest, as Christ becomes truly present to us. I always regret it when I succumb to the Liturgy of the Wandering Mind and miss that moment.

However we bring ourselves to worship, though, even when we are not as completely present as he is, Christ will work with us throughout the hour, touching even our fuming guts with his grace and peace. And then amen, and amen!

Elizabeth Scalia is editor-at-large for OSV. Follow her on X @theanchoress.