To become a better Christian, you need to form your emotions aright. It might also surprise you to know that Catholic teaching doesn't disparage the emotions. Rather, the traditional Catholic view — supported by giants in the Catholic tradition such as Saint Augustine, Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, and Saint Thomas Aquinas — is that ongoing conversion does not mean suppressing, ignoring, or eradicating the emotions, but reforming them.

In Emotional Holiness, Abbot Austin Murphy, OSB, shows how the emotions are to be shaped and trained so that they work with your pursuit of all that is good and avoidance of what is evil. Getting the emotions to work with the mind's pursuit of God and the things of God is especially important to help you persevere in your God-given vocation.

Emotions can be unwieldy things, but with perseverance and the help of God's grace, they can be trained to help you to do what is right and avoid what is wrong.