The Importance of Understanding and Controlling Our Passions

Passions are common to our humanity. Like all other human experiences, some of them are proper, beautiful, and good, while others are capable of great harm to others and to ourselves. It is a matter of moral maturity to recognize that while our passions are very powerful, they do not rule us, rather, we have the power to control them for our good and the good of others. When employed properly they can enhance the quality of our lives. When they become dominant in our lives and we fail to rein them in, they tend to become dangerous and destructive forces. If we do not learn this important truth, our passions can be our ruin.

Patience is a virtue. It is associated with another virtue, self-control. In some ways, the whole of the Hebrew Testament can be seen as a story about patience and self-control, revealed in the Chosen People’s long and patient yearning for the promised Messiah, and about the many bad consequences that befall them when they become impatient and rebellious. In Ecclesiastes 7:9 we see this: “Do not be quickly provoked in your spirit, for anger resides in the lap of fools.” This is an example of what happens to those who lack patience and self-control.

Unchecked passions lead us to sin and thereby to cause great harm to ourselves and to others. This is the definition of foolishness. And in Proverbs we read: “A hot tempered person stirs up conflict, but the one who is patient calms a quarrel.” This verse shows us the difference between the foolishly impatient person and the the wisely patient person. The former causes conflict, discord, and many, much more harmful, things. The man/woman who is patient and self-controlled brings the necessary calm to a difficult situation and makes the return of order and peace possible.

We all know only too well the problems and the consequences that arise from unchecked passions like anger, jealousy, greed, and lust. There is a reason why these are called deadly sins. When we let them rule our responses to life’s challenges, we generally get the opposite of what we desire. Sometimes we get caught up in the storms of our passions, and we tend to want our desires (good or bad) to be gratified immediately, and when they are not, we become impatient, and this can lead to anger, even wrath, bitterness, resentment, and harmful behavior. This, of course, is irrational and never satisfies. So what can we do?

I used to use a metaphor with my students to get them to think about the virtues and values of patient endurance and self-control. Think of a sailboat. What moves the boat? The wind, of course. When the sails are filled with the wind the craft moves forward, or in whatever direction the winds are going. This is great when the winds are mild and breezy, but sometimes they can be fierce and dangerous, capable of overwhelming and battering the boat, even of destroying it. But the boat has something else besides the sail. It has a tiller and rudder. It is this that helps to direct and guide the boat with and through the power of the wind.

We are like that sailboat. And our passions are like the wind. They are powerful and they move us. Without a tiller, a rudder, the winds of our passions tend to take us wherever they want to go and can be very destructive. When we learn to use our tiller and rudder, or in other words, our patience and self-control, we do not rid ourselves of the winds of our passion, but we learn to control and to direct them properly, thereby enhancing the quality of our life, and preventing those passions from dashing us against the rocks of real life, destroying ourselves and/or others.

Paul gives us some thoughts on how patience and self-control can bring us closer to the life of faith that Jesus Christ calls us to in our daily lives. In Romans 8:25 we read, “But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.” Life is often a matter of having to wait for the things we want and hope for. And often these things never come. Patience gives us the ability to wait and to accept the will of God in all things.

In Ephesians 4:2, Paul writes, “Be completely humble and gentle, be patient, bearing with one another in love.” It is these virtues, otherwise known as, “fruits of the Holy Spirit”, that enable us to discipline our passions, that help us calm the inner storms and the outer, worldly storms that we encounter in our individual and our communal lives. We all know through experience that there is great need for these mature virtues in our own lives, in the life of our faith communities, and in society in general. Let us, then, all pray daily for an increase in these fruits of the Holy Spirit. With them, we can turn our passions into powers for the good, rather than forces of harm. Amen.