"Blessed are the meek, for they shall possess the land." - Matthew 5:5
Who are the meek?
They are the gentle, the mild, the sweetly patient; they are those little concerned to defend themselves against ill treatment, but relying rather on God's providence to protect and vindicate them. Saint Augustine says, "The meek are those who yield to reproaches and resist evil, but overcome evil with good." Meekness is the natural fruit of detachment and of humility. What inflames men to anger and prompts them to revenge? The sense of being hurt in their pride or in their interests. Take away their concern for both, and all irritation and vindictiveness subsides. Meekness, gentleness, is also the outcome of that charity described by Saint Paul: Love is patient, love is kind. It is not jealous, is not pompous, it is not inflated, it is not rude, it does not seek its own interests, it is not quick-tempered, it does not brood over injury, it does not rejoice over wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. (1st Corinthians 13)
Meekness is the corrective of anger. Anger, like all the other passions natural to man, is good in itself and evil only when excessive. But it overflows easily, and needs constant watchfulness to be kept within bounds, and this is precisely the function of meekness. Meekness, therefore, is not mere apathy, or a timidity that paralyzes action; neither is it mere softness or lack of spirit. These dispositions, though real faults, may produce not unlike effects; they may facilitate the practice of the virtue, but they are no substitute for it, no constituent part of it. Meekness is most needed by men of strong impulses, and its presence in them is a sign, not of weakness but of strength. It was one of the greatest and most difficult conquests of the Saints, a virtue harder to practise than the greatest austerities.
To hold in check all impatience, all wrath, all resentment; to stand disarmed, as it were, in presence of injustice and violence, is one of the most characteristic features of the Christian spirit. There are few things that our Lord inculcated more forcibly or exhibited more strikingly in His own person. He came to establish the kingdom of God on earth, not by violent conquest, but by gentle persuasion. "Come and listen to me" He said, "for I am meek and humble of heart." He never employed his miraculous power to protect Himself. When in danger, He yielded and withdrew up to the time divinely appointed for His passion and death. And during that terrible ordeal He bore all unresistingly, silently. As the prophet had foretold: "He was led as a sheep to the slaughter, and as a lamb before the shearer He opened not His mouth" Thus it was that He himself practised what He had so often taught his disciples. In that extreme form by which he was wont to emphasize His teachings, He had told his followers (Matthew 5:39,42) to yield to injustice and not to resist evil, to love those that hated them, to pray for those that did them wrong. When He sent forth His apostles for the first time it was like sheep in the midst of wolves, and when on their return they spoke of bringing down fire from heaven on the inhospitable Samaritan town, His answer was: "Ye know not of what Spirit ye are" Again we may remark how often similar recommendations occur in the writings of Saint Paul. Non vosmetipsos defendentes, sed date locum irae. . . . Deponite iram, indignationem . . . omnis amaritudo et ira tollatur a vobis. Noli vinci a malo sed vince in bono malum. By these and similar lessons and examples this new and heavenly virtue was planted in earthly soil. And as it grew and spread, its mysterious power asserted itself more and more. It is by submissiveness and pliancy, by yielding, by enduring without resistance, that the Christians won their way in the world, and finally won the world to them. It is by teaching gentleness, meekness, courtesy, that the Church toned down the pride of the Roman and the rough violence of the barbarian, and created the Knight of the Middle Ages, no less conspicuous for his tender regard for what was weak than for his fearless bravery.
Gentleness is a special characteristic of the priest. Saint Paul, himself a striking model of the virtue, points it out as a distinctive sign of fitness for the ministry. "Thou, O man of God" he writes to Timothy, "pursue piety, charity, patience, mildness." "The servant of God must not wrangle, but be mild towards all men, with modesty admonishing them that resist the truth." And in his direction to Titus regarding the choice of priests and bishops, he tells him to select men of blameless life, neither proud, nor hot-tempered, nor violent; non superbum, non iracundum, non percussorem.
This is the tradition of Christian ages all over the Church. Wherever we meet a saint, however strict he may be with himself, he is kind, forbearing, gentle with others. His zeal for the glory of God is always tempered with pity for the sinner. And so should it be with every priest; for what is he, after all, among his fellow men but the representative of one who, when He came among men, was the very embodiment of gentleness and mercy? "The goodness and kindness of our God." Alas I how often this so-called zeal has only succeeded in closing the hearts of men against priest and Church, and led them to a total neglect of the practices of religion, if not to final impenitence.
"O ye pastors, put away from you all narrowness of heart. Enlarge, enlarge your compassion. You know nothing if you know merely how to command, to reprove, to correct, to expound the letter of the law. Be fathers, yet that is not enough; be mothers." - Father Fenelon
- from Daily Thoughts for Priests, by Father J B Hogan, S.S., D,D., 1899; it has the Imprimatur of Archbishop John Joseph Williams, Archdiocese of Boston, Massachusetts