How Saint Jerome faced his excessive anger

Saint Jerome was known to lash out at people and spit angry comments, but it was his repentance that saved him.
Anger is a feeling and in itself it is not sinful. It is also possible that anger can spur us to do something heroic and stand up for those who are persecuted.
However, it is much easier to let anger consume us, and therefore our words no longer reflect our Christian faith.

St. Jerome knew this all too well, as he was known for his excessive anger. He was not proud of his anger and often regretted his words immediately after saying them.

People's actions could easily trigger him, and his discussions with other scholars weren't nice.

Why then was Saint Jerome canonized as a saint if he was such an angry person, widely known for his offensive words?

Pope Sixtus V passed in front of a painting of Saint Jerome holding a rock and commented: "You are right to carry that stone, because without it the Church would never have canonized you".

Sixtus was referring to a practice of St. Jerome of beating himself with a stone whenever he was tempted, or in reparation for his sins. He knew he was not perfect and he would fast, pray, and cry out to God often for mercy.

Finding myself, as it were, abandoned to the power of this enemy, I threw myself in spirit at Jesus' feet, bathing them with my tears, and I tamed my flesh by fasting for weeks. I am not ashamed to reveal my temptations, but it pains me that I am no longer what I was. I often combined whole nights with days, crying, sighing and beating my chest until the desired calm returned. I feared the very cell where I lived, because it witnessed the bad suggestions of my enemy: and being angry and sternly armed against myself, I went alone to the most secret parts of the desert and a deep valley or a steep rock, that was the place of my prayer, there I have thrown this miserable sack of my body.

In addition to these physical torments that he inflicted on himself, he also devoted himself to the study of Hebrew, to quell the many temptations that would assail him.

When my soul was on fire with bad thoughts, in order to subdue my flesh, I became a scholar of a monk who had been Jewish, to learn the Hebrew alphabet from him.

Saint Jerome would have struggled with anger for the rest of his life, but whenever he fell, he would cry out to God and do whatever he could to improve his word.

We can learn from St. Jerome's example and examine our life, especially if we are prone to anger. Do we regret this anger that hurts others? Or are we proud, unwilling to admit that we made a mistake?

What separates us from the saints is not our mistakes, but our ability to ask God and others for forgiveness. If we do, we have a lot more in common with the Saints than we might expect