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Holy Meekness

ST. PAUL refers to meekness as one of the fruits of the Holy Spirit. It derives, indeed, from supernatural love; in particular, it presupposes patience and inward peace.

     Meekness is comprehensible only in the light of Revelation

Mansuetude, or true meekness in the Christian sense of the word, belongs to the virtues that can only arise in us on the basis of Revelation. It is not accessible nor even understandable to us until we become aware not merely of the metaphysical situation of man but of the entirely new world of the supernatural, implying a collapse of all purely natural measures.

It requires an awareness of the new light that issues from the words of the Sermon on the Mount—the words which revolutionize all canons and rules of the natural world to a status of merely relative validity. Meekness can have no meaning for us unless we know that God, the Lord Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth, is Love.

It is Christian Revelation which promises ultimate victory, not to natural strength nor to superior power but to those “who are meek and humble of heart.” “He hath put down the mighty from their seat and hath exalted the humble” (Luke 1:52).

God has redeemed mankind, not by force but by the God-Man’s death on the cross. And, what Christ has bidden us to do is not to spread His truth by sword and fire but to proclaim it as prisoners of His love. The ethos by which we are to overcome the world is that of a humble and gentle charity. “Blessed are the meek: for they shall possess the land” (Matt. 5:4).

True meekness, then, cannot blossom except in those who have seen the light of Christ—lumen Christi—and grasped the wholly new order of the supernatural. It is a privilege of those who have read the secret of true strength: the strength that is pleasing to God. Accordingly, holy meekness is not only a lovely flower of the Christian ethos but a central virtue of the true Christian, who reflects the primary law of the supernatural order. It contains the key to the supernatural power of Him who spoke the words: “Learn of me, because I am meek and humble of heart” (Matt. 11:29).

     A phlegmatic person is not thereby meek

At first sight meekness would seem to be, chiefly, the opposite of what is called a violent temper. By contrast to the petulant, irascible or irritable character, the meek or gentle person is one who patiently bears opposition or even insults, and always preserves a calm, kind, and amicable attitude. Even if he feels compelled to blame someone, he will do so in a kind and suave manner without any harshness, acerbity or anger; without using any offensive language. What else could meekness be?

However, this view is inadequate.

Meekness is by no means unequivocally determined by its being antithetic to anger and violence. The fact that a person quietly swallows any insult is not necessarily a sign of true meekness in him. It may also be due to a cool and sluggish—as it is sometimes called, phlegmatic—temperament. Such a person keeps his temper because, with his thick skin, he does not feel hit by an insult; his love of comfort does not allow him to display any explosive reactions.

Now the phlegmatic temperament differs from the virtue of meekness, first, by being a mere natural disposition, whereas meekness is a virtue born of a free spiritual attitude. Secondly, the phlegmatic behavior has something heavy, listless, lusterless about it, whereas there is proper to meekness a note of soaring and luminous suppleness.

     Good-natured joviality is not meekness

However, not only a dull and indifferent temperament but also the good-natured joviality of the typically sociable kind of person, the good mixer, is a thing utterly different from meekness. True, joviality is not only a mere disposition but expresses a personal attitude proper; but its quality is widely different from meekness. It does not convey the sustaining warmth of love; it springs from a need for surface harmony. The good fellow takes everything in a friendly spirit—for the sake of his own comfort rather than out of his consideration for others.

This jolly attitude has something unimportant, superficial about it; you will find it in such persons only as are incapable of a deep fervor and strong self-dedication. It is incompatible with a great and vigorous personality, with the hunger and thirst for justice; generally it is coupled with a certain laziness and shallowness.

It is usually a man of this type whom we are wont to call, with a kind of benign contempt, a mere cipher. Frequently, such people are of an inordinately yielding disposition, with their weakness easily exploited by the unscrupulous. Their freedom from anger and harshness is bought at the cost of grave deficiencies.

     Meekness is not the cultivated indifference of the Stoic

Nor, again, should meekness be confused with the aloof composure or ataraxy of the stoic. The cool self-control of the latter, who refuses to be affected by an insult, is colored by indifference and neutrality: a mood far removed from the warm breath of charity exhaled by Christian meekness. What underlies the meekness of the stoic is not loving kindness nor a value-response in reference to a fellow person but a habit of apathy and self-discipline, acquired by sedulous training and cultivated as an end in itself.

     Meekness is the manifestation of inward charity

True meekness is not a matter of outward demeanor only; it does not consist in the mere avoidance of angry outbreaks or other manifestations of an unbridled temper. Certainly it implies all that—but implies it as the manifestation of a charitable inward attitude. A man who is inwardly seething with anger and full of enmity towards his fellow but, controlling himself through will power, succeeds in keeping up an appearance of friendliness, is not therefore meek in the sense here reserved for the term. To disavow within ourselves any inchoate impulse of anger, to be intensely aware of its ugly disharmony, to have it shattered by the contact of Christ before the need could even arise to curb it—this is what constitutes true meekness.

     Meekness is far more than self-control

Mere outward self-control, when our anger is checked in its manifestation while its venom subsists within us, falls entirely short of that virtue. Nay, even at the stage of formally disavowing our anger but remaining nevertheless inwardly excited, we can only be credited with the pursuit, not with the possession of meekness.

Accordingly, meekness is distinguishable from self-control even as regards its outward appearance. A somewhat discerning observer will easily distinguish one from the other. An act of iron self-discipline always impresses us with a sense of hardness, whereas an act of meekness irradiates the mellow brightness, the supple harmony of loving kindness. The former, besides its value in preventing a threatening clash, may force our respect; but it invariably lacks the irresistible disarming effect of true meekness.

Meekness bears mainly on our behavior towards our fellow men. It is specifically opposed to two sets of qualities: first, to everything brutal, uncouth, coarse-grained, and violent; secondly, to all modes of hostility, to the subtly or pointedly venomous as well as to the massive or rabid form of hostility. Let us next turn our attention to the first-named aspect.

     Meekness rejects every brutal, forcible relation to others

He who possesses the virtue of meekness has grasped the essential evil that lies in all brutal force. He is aware of the sublime structure of the spiritual person; of the depth and the delicacy that characterize all valid acts in the realm of that spirituality; of the gulf that divides the laws of physical reality from those in the realm of personal life. He knows the difference between things made and things created: a difference whose archetype we find in that formula of the Creed, genitum, non factum, and whose many analogies pervade the created universe.

Hence, he would never attempt to enforce by mechanical and extrinsic means what is capable of realization only by way of an organic unfolding. He loathes treating personal realities after the pattern of techniques dealing with the world of mechanism. Utterly averse to the very idea of attaining an end by violence, he will also be disinclined to combat the evil in the world by mere mechanical methods.

He experiences intensely the incompatibility between everything brutal or forcible and the spirituality of the personal mode of existence. The preciousness and nobility inherent in the highest sphere of created being, that of the spiritual person, are always present to his eyes.

     Meekness is a tender, explicitly spiritual attitude

Not only does meekness imply a specific awareness of this particular status of personal being; it is, itself, something definitely spiritual—the expression of a predominance of spirituality in man. The type of person in whom true meekness prevails must be distinguished, not merely from the obviously contrasting type—the material type, stamped as it were with the unlit dullness and mechanical clumsiness of matter; he must also be clearly distinguished from another type of character with whom he is more easily confused, namely the man endowed with a certain soft and tender kind of vitality, not conditioned by any vigorous instincts, and displaying the flow of life in the form of a soft, flexible, eminently organic rhythm rather than of explosive urges and robust pulsations.

In the meek person, there shines the tenderness which is specifically proper to the spiritual. His being breathes the victory of the spiritual sphere over the material and vital. In the meek man a spiritual principle has stamped the whole man with its imprint and conferred its radiant bloom upon him.

     Meekness does not try to dominate as do the spiritually “hard”

At this stage, however, one more distinction becomes necessary. There exists, too, a spiritual type of man who also lacks meekness. Persons of this type are not brutal nor mechanical in attitude—which would contradict their being spiritual—yet they reveal what might be called a cramped character. In such persons, everything is controlled by the mind. They are in no way swayed by unconscious vitality. Their conduct is governed entirely by the free center of their conscious personality. In them, the attitude of intentional meaningful response to being has attained to full maturity, but nevertheless, there is something highly strung, something hard and cramped about them.

In their stern idealism, they are set on enforcing, in their own lives at least, what they know to be right and desirable. They overestimate man’s range of power and place a one-sided trust in the efficacy of his will. They are deficient in inward suppleness; they know no melting or serenity.

On the contrary, he who is graced with meekness is eminently supple and serene—tender, relenting, in a sense relaxed, as though soaring in a luminous medium of freedom and peace. He would enforce nothing; he accords everything the time required by its inward law of unfolding. Despite all its fervor and intensity, his effort retains a quality of gracious, unhardened mellowness.

For all its supra-vital rationality and morality, the cramped character we have described above still implies an infringement, however subtle and hidden, of the inward law of spiritual and personal reality. A person of this type transfers, in some way, methods of the infra-spiritual world to the sphere of the spiritual person. He applies purely spiritual forces—his conscious will, in particular—according to the pattern in which our spirit can operate upon material things. Thus, in a sense, his aggressive spirituality, genuine though it is, means a treatment of things spiritual as though they were material.

     Meekness respects the spiritual sphere and its laws

But meekness, as we have seen, implies not only the supremacy in man of the spiritual element, but also his respect of the spiritual sphere and its particular laws. He who has true meekness treats spiritual reality according to its proper nature. In dealing with what is spiritual and personal, he adapts his methods to the fact of its fundamental difference from all other realms of being. This is precisely the virtue in which the cramped and violent man is found wanting, be he ever so much actuated by spiritual motives and ever so rational in the choice of his attitudes.

     Meekness acknowledges the impotence of force in the spiritual realm

Moreover, true meekness implies the knowledge that in relation to the spiritual sphere—that is, the plane of reality for which meaning is constitutive—violence is not merely inadequate but also inefficacious. The truly meek man is aware that on this plane, forcefulness is far from being the really victorious force; that real spiritual power is of an entirely different and more sublime nature—a power which essentially operates through the medium of the intelligible.

Above all, the fact of Christ is sealed upon his soul, the redeeming merciful love of God, of which Paul the Apostle says: “The goodness and kindness of God our Savior appeared” (Titus 3:4). Brutal or mechanical force is still incomparably more inadequate to and incompatible with the supernatural than it is with the natural sphere. The hidden operation of grace is incomparably more organic than even the most sublime spirituality within the confines of natural being. Every attempt to force a conversion or to secure the unfolding of grace by mechanical outward means, is even far more preposterous than are all forcible methods applied to the mental world.

The concept of force of violence is not, of course, limited here to attitudes into which an inimical intent enters. It is applicable wherever men, fatally mistaken in their views of spiritual (let alone, supernatural) ends, plan to impose the Good on others by force, or at any rate trust the efficacy of mechanical means in securing its acceptance. Such men, even in proposing to help their neighbors and to heap benefits upon them, are essentially guilty of using violence. They adhere to the principle of violence.

Not so, the person imbued with true meekness. Even when fighting an evil power, he never lapses into violence. Even in such a situation his whole behavior, inward and outward, is based upon his recognition of the particular character of spiritual—and even more so of supernatural—reality. He is reverently aware of the structure of spiritual reality, translucent with meaning. He is filled with awe before the mystery of the operations of grace; he has understood the parable of the wheat and the chaff.

Notwithstanding his adamant insistence on the truth, according to St. Paul’s words: “Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season: reprove, entreat, rebuke” (2 Tim. 4:2); notwithstanding his intransigence and heroic strength of soul—he preserves that reverence for the structure of personal being and the more sublime mystery of grace, and so he invariably keeps aloof from violence and bitterness.

Nor does this apply to his outward conduct only, but to his innermost attitude as well.

     Meekness is a manifestation of tender, holy love

Turning, now to the second main aspect of meekness—its antithetic relation to violence as an expression of enmity—we shall be able to gain an even clearer view of its specific quality.

Meekness presupposes love; and with it an insight into the beauty of the human soul—the preciousness of the spiritual person as an image of God and a vessel of grace. It flows from our recognition of the beauty of love, goodness, and harmony, and of the hideousness of enmity, strife, and disharmony.

Still more, true meekness presupposes a mind conscious of the face of Christ, of His holy goodness and mildness. It presupposes a soul touched by His love, which softens all hardened fibers and dissolves all crampedness. It implies a taste of that peace whose concept we have tried to convey in the previous chapter.

Beyond the knowledge of these things, it requires a full response thereto. What constitutes the specific domain of meekness is the manifestation of love: the way in which love—the personified intentio benevolentiae as it were, condensing in it the whole personality of the subject—stretches out to reach the beloved person. In other words, meekness represents a certain consequence of benevolent, transfigured, holy love: that is, the way in which we spiritually embrace the beloved person.

The attitude of love implies, as we know, two basic elements: the intention of union (intentio unionis) and the intention of well-wishing (intentio benevolentiae). In addition to these, there are many other elements to be found in love: the tone of inner suavity, the elements of fervor and audacity, and the act of a heroic self-abandonment.

The aspect of which meekness embodies a specific expression is that of a serene mellowness inherent in the perfect attitude of love: the softening quality of love by virtue of which it becomes, as it were, a tangible substance, which might be described as fluid goodness. Meekness is comparable to a seal which this element of love impresses on our whole essence, thus conferring a specific stamp upon all forms of our communication and intercourse with other persons.

Our inward attention to the fellow person (the way we think of him, judge him, appraise him inwardly), our tone of voice when speaking to him, our choice of words, our rhythm of speech—all this as well as all other details of our behavior towards him will, if we possess true meekness, be informed by that particular element of love.

Accordingly, all kinds of enmity, hatred and irritation—in view of the trait of venomousness peculiar to them—are evidently antithetic to meekness.

     Coarseness, roughness, and violence are explicit antitheses of meekness

However, what constitutes a more specific antithesis to true meekness, its polar opposite as it were, are the qualities of roughness, coarseness, hardness, and violence. These are eminently opposed, not only to love as such, as are all modes of enmity, but to that particular quality of love in which meekness is rooted. The irascible, brutal, violent kind of person, bent on overriding another’s will, on beating him into submission, is he who forms the really specific contrast to the man endowed with the virtue of meekness.

     Meekness does not “harden,” even when attacked

He who possesses this virtue will always, even though he be attacked or injured, preserve that radiance of loving kindness: that soft bloom of a sublime spirituality entirely ordained to the intention of charity. It is as though he never accepted a provocation. Even though faced with an enemy, he does not exchange the garment of love, the unarmed innocence of loving kindness, for a coat-of-mail which would harden him and protect him against the arrows of his assailant. Instead he tenders his vulnerable heart, unshielded, to the impact of those arrows, without steeling his heart against them. He endures the wounds inflicted upon him. No attack will impel him to abandon that specific openness of the soul which is a chief characteristic of love.

We all know the peculiar kind of hardening that takes place whenever we have to cope with an aggression. So long as we are treated with charity, we in our turn display a charitable openness of heart; as soon as we become the victims of an insult, we close ourselves; we stiffen and bristle. All our mellowness has disappeared; we oppose a hard coat-of-mail to the arrows of our adversary. To put it more explicitly, we either withdraw behind the walls of defensive seclusion or else turn upon our enemy in anger, returning blow for blow and meeting him in the destructive fury of enmity.

It might be said that fallen man bears in his soul a number of different fields of sensitivity, which receive and at which are aimed the different attitudes of others directed towards us. Insult, abuse, and mockery, notably, are aimed at a certain field in our soul which is keyed to the theme of honor. If that field of sensitivity is touched by the injurious word or gesture, the offender has realized his specific intention. This region of the soul is the habitat of harsh and irascible reactions par excellence. The sores which come about here give rise not to the straight pain of chagrin but to the venomous, bitter itch of irritation and resentment, which stirs us into a fighting position.

Sensitivity or susceptibility of this kind is founded in a certain deeply rooted attitude of self-assertion. In the saint, who has definitively risen above this attitude, the sensitivity that originates in it has been deprived of its base and meaning, and hence dies away. An insult no longer wounds him according to its specific intention but merely as an act of uncharitableness. It irritates him no longer, though it still distresses his heart.

The position of defending one’s honor creates a shuttered attitude against one’s fellow men. Persons strongly centered on that motif—those eminently fanatical about their “honor”—are therefore hard in their general attitude towards others. They are, so to speak, always on the qui vive, always on the lookout for insults to their dignity. In the ordinary sort of person who, though not a saint, is not thus abnormally anxious about his honor, the reaction of becoming hard and sealed up only appears after he has actually been defied or insulted.

The meek man, then, is distinguished by the fact that he does not know this gesture of hardening his soul but remains, even in the face of an enemy, in the position of that soft, unguarded openness which is love’s mode of appearance. In his soul, the sensitive region of honor is blotted out. So also are other sensitive regions that foster some variety of the attitude of fierce resistance to an attacker; the region of specific sensitivity about one’s rights, for instance.

     Meekness does not close off the soul, as does sulking

There are also, however, attitudes in which we remain soft and which nevertheless are surpassed by the man endowed with true meekness, Certain people react to offenses or insults, to unjust or contemptuous treatment and so forth, by the attitude of passive ill temper described as sulking. As distinct from the combative rebound of irritation, sulking is not an irascible mood of the soul. The sulker does not stiffen into a fighting position; he lapses into a specific egocentric variety of softness. The overdelicate, squeamish sort of people seize every opportunity to feel hurt and to brood over the offense suffered.

What exactly is sulking! It is a peculiar way of withdrawing into ourselves, very frequently associated with tears of commiseration for our own unhappy self. With a lump in our throat, we take a sort of mournful delight in imagining how the person who has wronged us would feel at this moment if he heard that we had met with a disaster.

We are itching, not to avenge the insult we have suffered by retaliating in kind, but to punish its author by shaming him. We wish so to arrange and manifest the consequences of his conduct (perhaps by inveigling him into a new set of circumstances in some way analogous to the former situation), so that his guilt, or at any rate his selfishness, callousness or whatever fault we attribute to him, will appear in a glaring light. We derive an unhealthy joy from representing to ourselves the chagrin and contrition of the guilty one as he becomes aware of what he has forfeited by his act of inconsiderateness, or as he sees us in a condition that reveals the gravity of his offense.

Sulking, then, implies an act, not of hardening but of dosing to. Whereas the truly meek one always remains open (even to an enemy), the sulker, even though remaining soft, lets the lids of his soul fall, as it were. He quits the kindly, serene attitude of love. Also, the resentment of sulking implies an inward crampedness in the place of freedom.

Moreover, softness in the sulker takes on a spineless quality incompatible with all strength of soul. Only an effeminate weakling can gain comfort and pleasure from wallowing in self-pity. Inseparable from sulking is an attitude of self-importance and self-centeredness. This, again, means a sharp contrast to meekness, for which a selfless attention to the fellow person—as expressed in the glance of love—is absolutely essential.

Whereas he who possesses meekness is ready to endure a wrong charitably, the sulker, though he too suffers it without retaliating, cannot be properly said to endure it. He only does so ostensibly: in reality, he forbears from hitting back precisely in order to make the offender’s guilt more conspicuous and thus to hurt him.

The meek man forgives the wrong his adversary has committed. The sulker, far from forgiving it, definitely resents it and charges his enemy with it no less than does the irascible man. The meek person is wounded by an uncharitable act, but it is powerless to deflect him from charity; in the sulker, however, a sting is left behind: he continues cleaving inwardly to the wrong with which he perpetually reproaches the offender—perhaps, indeed, more so than does the man prone to explosive anger.

     Sulking is motivated both by pride and concupiscence

The sensitive person, with a penchant for sulking, is hungry for love; not that he is himself rich in love and eager to see his love reciprocated, but he craves the soft comfort of being ensconced in a snug corner, the gratifying sensation of being petted, cajoled, and pampered. He is generally of a soft-fibered type. He is greatly attached to the amenities of life; he spoils himself and wants to be spoiled by others. He is indignant at being roughly handled, not because uncharitableness as such wounds him but because he is shocked by an experience opposed to that of caresses and blandishments—his chief source of pleasure.

Two motives, then, underlie the attitude of sulking. In the first place, pride: that is, an essential and seemingly self-evident claim to importance; a need felt for riding high on the consideration of others. Secondly, a certain type of concupiscence, which renders the subject particularly susceptible to the charms of velvety cushions, figuratively speaking; of being softly treated, and spoiled. Such a person is, first of all, soft towards himself. In a general sense, he lets himself go, allured by the mirage of a life in which there are no harsh winds at all but only softly whispering breezes. He is, in fact, much too egocentric to be capable of the true happiness of being loved.

True love would require on his part the capacity of loving others, which implies a readiness for heroic self-surrender. An uncharitable treatment does not wound him by reason of its intrinsic ugliness and the virulent malice it contains. It irks him because it inflicts upon him an unpleasant experience of roughness and harshness, and troubles the tepid atmosphere in which he feels comfortable. To sum up, his softness does not imply in him, as it would in a hard and irascible character, a great wealth of love, but merely a feebler and less spirited nature. Softness in this sense is anything but a value.

     The softness in meekness is penetrated by active goodness

The softness inherent in meekness is of a vastly different type. An abyss yawns between both also with respect to their quality. Meekness is penetrated by a sublime flavor of active goodness. It is the transfigured softness proper to supernatural love, which, St. Paul the Apostle says, “Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things” (1 Cor. 13:7). It presupposes true freedom—freedom from all spasms of egocentrism.

In him who has attained to true meekness, there no longer remains any field of sensitivity to his treatment or appraisal by others except one: a heart warmed and made happy by the enlivening ray of pure love. Wounded by the dart of malice and hostility, blood flows from his wounded heart, yet at the same time he is neither embittered, irritated, nor sick with pettish resentment. Vituperations and insults, slights and injuries, acts of hatred or of contempt—they all no longer affect him with their specific venom, by tearing at his pride or grating on his sense of self-importance, but solely and exclusively in their quality as antitheses to love. The meek Christian is anything but insensible. He by no means views an offense inflicted upon him in a spirit of unimpassioned neutrality. By reason of the uncharitableness it represents, it will on the contrary bore into his heart—without, however, any poisoning or narrowing effect.

     Meekness is compatible with ardent zeal and intrepid strength

Hence, the softness of meekness is consistent with ardent zeal and intrepid strength. St. Stephen, whom the Acts of the Apostles (6:8) call plenus gratia et fortitudine (“full of grace and fortitude”), is at the same time a shining example of true meekness. The brief account we read there of his conduct during his stoning reveals to us clearly his sublime meekness. No trace is seen here of a fighting hero’s posture; none of the stubborn resistance of a purely natural virility; nothing of hardness or bitterness of any kind. In his victorious love of God, as also in his mild and forgiving love towards his murderers, he offers his heart, clad in the soft garments of charity, to their implacable hatred.

     Jesus is the model of meekness

But it is in Jesus our Lord that we discern holy meekness at its purest. He lets Judas kiss Him; suffers Himself to be wounded by the touch of His treacherous apostle: “Friend, whereto art thou come?” (Matt. 26:50). The dolorous words, “You are clean, but not all” (John 13:10); His exposure of His most holy heart to the wrath of His pursuers; His attitude of sorrowful mildness and forgiveness, remaining fully open even in the face of His betrayer and of His slayers: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34); that glance of a wounded yet generous and serene love, which lighted on Peter the Apostle after his denial of the Lord, kindling in him a fire of charity never to be extinguished again: here is holy meekness, a force issuing from inalterable and triumphant Love, a force infinitely more irresistible than any natural power on earth.

Here, indeed, is the new accent, the new idiom of the Gospel: the new gesture—minored in a thousand forms of expression– of redeeming Love, which the world does not understand but by which it is bound to be overcome. “Blessed are the meek: for they shall possess the land.”

     Holy meekness embodies transcendent power

It constitutes a specific test of our possession of a supernatural spirit if we comprehend the sublime beauty of holy meekness and recognize the transcendent power it embodies. Whoever still seeks for strength in some kind of natural heroism proves that, though he may have grasped certain truths of the Faith, he is as yet enslaved to a pagan idol of virility. The weaponless candor of holy meekness impresses him as something feminine; he deems it inconsistent with the spirit of virility.

Many a Christian is inclined to this error. In reaction against a well-known sickly, sweetish disfigurement of Our Lord’s person in a certain insipid brand of devotional images, songs, and pious books, such Christians would read into the person of the God-Man a natural ethos of virile heroism. Combatting one mistake, they thus fall into the opposite one. Every attempt at thus dwarfing the stature of Him from whose “brightness a new light hath risen to shine on the eyes of our souls” (Preface of the Nativity) to the measure of purely natural categories—be it that of a placid kindliness or warlike courage—is in itself preposterous.

Holy mildness and meekness are as far remote from feminine fragility, let alone weak sentimentalism, as are the conquering solemnity and supernatural force of the Kyrios and Victor Rex from natural heroism, let alone a crabbed emphasis on virility. Nor do these two supernatural aspects merely stand side by side; they are indissolubly linked together. The holiness and supernatural sweetness of him “who is meek and humble of heart”; the heart that, unshielded, lies open to any attack: fons totius consolationis (“fount of all consolation”: Litany of the Sacred Heart); the suffering, holy, redeeming Love—this is what brings us to our knees and reveals to us the divine power of Him of whom St. Paul says, “All things were created by Him and in Him; and He is before all: and by Him all things consist” (Col. 1:16-17).

The primal truth of Revelation—that “God is Love”—flashes up in the all-redeeming love of the Lamb “who taketh away the sins of the world.” Of the Son of Man (whom the Church thus glorifies in the Sequence for Easter: “To a Father kind, rebellious men / sinless Son hath led again”), St. John says: “And we saw his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14).

Consider the image which the holy Liturgy presents to us of the Lord. According to the mystery proper to each feast, Christ appears to our eyes now in His infinite mildness and meekness (as in the Vesper of the Most Holy Name of Jesus), now in His victorious Divine power (as in the Sequence for Easter); now again, in both attitudes immediately united one to the other, as in the commemoration of the Passion on Good Friday: Popule mens, quid feci obi?. . . Agios o Theos; Agios ischyros; Agios athanatos. (“O my people, what have I done unto thee?. . .O holy God; O holy, O mighty One; O holy, immortal One.”)

For these attitudes are, in truth, not two opposites but two sides of one and the same Being, Divine and Human; their union denotes that specific mark of God, an apparent coincidentia oppositorum.

Those, then, who possess a supernatural spirit may be known by this—that they do not feel shocked or baffled at the meekness and the holy innocence, the love unarmed and disarming, of Jesus; that, instead, they sink to their knees before the Lamb who “taketh away the sins of the world,” and who spoke the words, “I am meek and humble of heart”; that they say in adoration with St. Thomas the Apostle, “My Lord and my God.”

     We attain holy meekness by dwelling spiritually with Jesus

How can we attain to holy meekness?

In order to stay habitually in the soft, gentle, open attitude of loving kindness, we must, above all, constantly elevate our eyes to the face of the divine Savior. Whatever aggressions, insults, injuries, and humiliations we suffer, we must immediately bring them into the light that emanates from this most holy Face. In fact we should aim at dwelling in that light so permanently that our very first awareness of an injustice or slight inflicted upon us will be already impregnated with the spirit of meekness and free from any trace of the poison of resentment, “Learn of me, because I am meek and humble of heart” (Matt. 11:29). Such a sustained vision of Jesus and His Sacred Heart, “the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 2:2); a constant breathing of the air of His holy charity—can alone maintain us in that state of inward fluidity and suppleness.

True, the acts of meekness unfold in our attitude towards our fellow men; but meekness cannot thrive in us unless our eyes meet the glance of Jesus; unless we lay ourselves open to the sunlight of His love and in love surrender ourselves to Him. “My soul melted when he spoke” are the words of the spouse in the Canticle of Canticles (Song of Sol. 5:6). St. Gregory in his Homily on Luke 7:42 comments upon them; “For the soul of a man that seeks not his Creator is hard, because it remains cold in itself. But once it is seized with an ardent desire to follow the Beloved, it hastens to him, molten in the fire of love.”

True meekness then cannot flourish in us unless our vital union with Jesus precludes the possibility of any attack from subjecting us to the control of its autonomous logic. It cannot exist in us unless our heart is pierced and conquered by the love of Him who said: “A new commandment I give unto you: That you love one another, as I have loved you” (John 13:34). This is the point of vantage from which we may conjure up, in its full and compelling reality, the vision of the sublimity of spiritual personality and of the incompatibility of all brute force with the laws of the spiritual sphere.

It is in the light of Jesus’ face—of His transfigured nature as Man—that we shall catch a bright glimpse of the nobility of man qua spiritual person. It is here that we gain a corresponding insight into the preposterous inadequacy of all mechanical and massive methods in the face of the particular structure of spiritual personality. Only thus shall we fathom to the full the odiousness as well as the futility of all rough and violent modes of behavior. We must come to abhor their very principle in our innermost hearts; we must loathe it still more in its association with an intention of enmity—whether or not expressly manifested in the form of actual anger.

But, as suggested above, our sustained vision of Christ will not merely keep us alive to the value of meekness and aware of the inferiority and ugliness of its opposite. It will also help us to abide in the mild, detached, unshielded inward attitude without which we cannot behave with true meekness towards others, A particle of the mellow splendor of Christ will radiate into our own heart. It will soften and refine our inward life and dissolve all cramped ego-obsessions in us. It will even, at a higher stage of virtue, prevent them from arising at all.

     Meekness presupposes the humility inherent in patience

Furthermore, meekness presupposes patience. As has been shown in Chapter 12, an eminently spastic and hardening effect issues from impatience; this cannot but sap the very foundations of meekness. But there is an even more specific consonance between these two virtues. Meekness, just as patience, implies one’s abstinence from assuming a false position of sovereignty above the universe—from feeling as though it were one’s due to be an absolute master. The humility inherent in patience is what underlies the softness—the absence of hardening—that is proper to meekness. In meekness lives the basic gesture of serving set forth in the words of Our Lord: “The Son of man is not come to be ministered unto, but to minister” (Matt. 20:28).

The natural illusion of a position of sovereignty is closely linked to the natural tendency to enforce whatever seems desirable. Once we feel it self-evident that we should be master over things we cannot help dealing with everything in a certain mode of hardness. Inversely, the basic gesture of service necessarily implies a tone of softness in our way of approaching the outside world. Thus, we see it confirmed that meekness, even though actualized in our relations with created beings, is in its essence conditioned by our position towards God.

     Meekness also manifests itself in kindness toward animals

More exactly, as we have seen earlier, meekness becomes actualized in our relations with our fellow men. To be sure, this field of relations constitutes its primary domain of unfolding; but a reflection thereof extends to our behavior towards all created things. In the first place, this applies to sentient beings inferior to man: that is to say, the dumb animals. He who has true meekness will never be cruel to animals. Whether he particularly sympathizes with an animal or not, he will never handle it roughly nor deny it a certain attention according to its specific character as a living being.

In an analogical (and by no means irrelevant) sense of the term, he will treat animals with charity, rather than unkindly pushing a brute aside as a mere troublesome alien body. Even though they happen to disturb him, he will maintain the kindly attitude of gentle softness. In particular, he will shun the false position of sovereignty in this relationship. Subject though animals are (in a sense) to the domination of man, he will utterly abstain from playing the despot. He will respect the character of a creature, the nobility and individual distinctness of life as such, the greater subtlety of the structure of organic life as contrasted to the mechanical forces of nature; he will, as it were, respect the right of these beings to an exercise of their dispositions within certain limits.

The all-pervading breath of loving kindness founded on humility will manifest itself, beyond an avoidance of all brutality, in a gesture of condescension and understanding, an attitude of friendly attention to the animal’s distinctive nature. Furthermore, true meekness will leave its trace even on the manner in which a person approaches and treats lifeless objects. Even where inert nature is concerned, the fundamental antithesis between meekness and the false position of sovereignty—the illusion that man can be an absolute master of anything on earth—remains applicable and valid.

     Meekness actualizes our inner peace in relation to others

The manner in which the meek man passes through the world breathes, in its every phase, that soft and serving attitude entirely detached from self-assertion. Whatever defects occur in his environment, he shows no eagerness to ferret them out nor to lay them bare, and much less, to fall upon them in a spirit of enmity. On the contrary, he would mildly cover them up and approach charitably those disfigured by them. The weapon with which he fights all disharmony is the radiance of his own indefectible harmony.

Inward peace is all the more an indispensable condition of meekness. He alone who preserves inward peace (removing from its path the obstacles we have listed in the preceding chapter) can possess that mellow harmony, free from all crampedness and all venom, from which meekness draws its nourishment.

Meekness is but the actualization of this inner harmony on the plane of our relationships with others: the shaping of all our reference to, and treatment of, our fellow men by the principle of a spontaneous, unhampered, overflowing charity. This dependence of meekness on patience and true peace makes it doubly evident that true meekness is unattainable for anyone who does not live through and in Christ.

     Meekness alone achieves true victory in the world

“Blessed are the meek: for they shall possess the land.” The meek, who in truth follow Christ and in all situations keep faithful to their primal response to the love of Christ—they shall obtain the promised land of eternal beatitude. Yet, already on earth they are irresistible: for them is also reserved true victory over the world. For it is they who challenge all evils in the world with the weapons of light; who resist all determination by the immanent automatisms of worldly concerns; and who confront all enmity with the superior power of an inalterable, soaring charity. True meekness is the token of our being thus anchored in the supernatural; the seal of the true and ultimate freedom that resides in suffering, serving, world-redeeming love.

In meekness is revealed the operation of the fundamental law of victory over the world: the principle of not returning like for like—of opposing the spirit of the world by an integrally new and different one, as expressed in the words of the Lord: “Love your enemies; do good to them that hate you” (Matt. 5:44). Meekness is likewise incarnate in the words, “If one strike thee on thy right cheek, turn to him also the other” (Matt. 5:39).

It means no passive toleration of all wrongs, no dull acquiescence in the dominion of sin—rather, it means true warriorship in the cause of Christ. However relentless his fight against sin, however ardent his zeal for the victory of the kingdom of God, the true warrior of Christ remains meek: he is melted by the love of Christ once it has been evoked in him by his glance upon the Savior who suffered and died for love.

“For they shall possess the land.” In his Homily on the words of Our Lord—“Behold I send you as sheep in the midst of wolves” (Matt. 10:16)—St. John Chrysostom with sublime mastery expounds this victory of the meek over the world. He paraphrases the words of the Lord: “When you start on your way, behave with the meekness of sheep, although you prepare to meet wolves, nay, to betake yourselves into their midst. For by this shall I reveal my power most visibly, that wolves shall be overcome by sheep, whereas the sheep, though exposed to the fangs of wolves and bleeding from innumerable wounds, shall not only not perish but even change the wolves into their own nature. Surely it is greater and more wonderful to win the soul of the foe, to turn his mind into its opposite, than to kill him. . . . So long as we are sheep, we conquer. Should a thousand wolves encompass us, we should win them over and emerge victorious. Yet if we become wolves, we shall be conquered. For then shall the Shepherd (who leads to pasture not wolves but sheep) withdraw his assistance from us. He shall turn from thee and abandon thee, seeing that thou makest it impossible for him to reveal his power. But if thou abidest meek, thy victory shall be his work.” (St. John Chrysostom, Homily 34.)

In truth, the meek will emerge victors over the world, because, in their struggle for the kingdom of God, they know no weapons except that by which Christ has redeemed the world and vanquished our hearts; because they have cast all other—all natural—weapons from them, countering all enmity and unruly fierceness of evil with the offer of their unshielded heart, which is ready to bleed to death for the sinner’s sake also.

If spoken by the meek, the word of truth which like a sword, severs soul and body, subtly insinuates itself like a breath of love into the innermost recesses of the soul. For the meek is reserved true victory over the world, because it is not they themselves who conquer, but Christ in them and through them.