Meekness is NOT Weakness

I read a book last year called Finding Joy & Peace by Marylin Gustin. The book changed my understanding of the beautitudes, my way of practically living out the faith daily, and just my life in general. Thank you Jesus for placing this book in my life! Just recently, I have found a bunch of things coming up in my life pointing toward what was probably my favourite chapter in the book, ‘Meekness is not Weakness’.

We often hear about ‘gentle Jesus, meek and mild,’ but Jesus WAS NOT a pansy who spent his time playing with puppies and kittens, and braiding the hair of little girls; no, he came to cast fire on the earth - not to bring peace, but a sword. Contrary to the opinion of the dubious, Jesus doesn’t contradict himself, so perhaps we should take another look at what meekness really is. I would even go so far as to say that meekness is true strength.

There was a widow who lived alone in England, I think.One night after she had gone to bed she heard some noise downstairs, so she went down to check it out, and found a man dressed in black, a balaclava over his head. He held a gun and pointed it at her. “Put that gun down,” she said calmly.
“Excuse me?” replied the thief replied.
“Put it down; you can take what you want. I won’t call the police”.
She proceded to assist the criminal in giving him all he wanted from her house. He then left quietly, as she prayed and said,”He obviously needed all of that more than I did”. The following day the woman returned home from work to find all the things the thief had stolen at her front door with a note on the top, which read: “Nobody has ever been so nice to me in my entire; you don’t deserve to be stolen from.”…………..wow!
She didn’t call the police, or pull a knife, or a baseball bat, or a gun on the thief. Why? Because she was meek - and blessed are the meek. When we are meek, we are not afraid and our insecurities won’t pull us away from loving radically, the way Jesus calls us to. During his Passion, Jesus could have reacted in many different ways, but He chose meekness - He chose to put his strength under control; that’s what gentleness is - strength under control.

At a leadership program I recently attended, participants were called at one stage to come to the front of the room and pick up a palm leaf which had one of the fruits of the spirit written on it. I felt the word ‘gentleness’ on my heart, made my way up to the front of the room, and the first leaf in sight read ‘gentleness’. Of course I took that one. Then two more things happened; I will tell you the second one first.

After the April FUEL Mass in Brisbane, the older man standing to my right introduced himself to me. I thought it was awesome that he would be so kind and friendly. THEN, he says to me something along the lines of ‘Jesus became sin for us, so that we could become sin for another man’ and I was like, ‘Wow man, that’s profound!’ It really is profound, and it probably wouldn’t have made so much sense if the first thing hadn’t happened…

As many of you know, Lent was an important time for the Pro-life movement and their worldwide campaign ‘40 Days for Life,’ which I fully supported to the point where I even got the bumper sticker =P but seriously…in this time a lot of abortion debates happen, and it made me look deeper into the question of what should happen when the woman is raped. In that situation, I would still be pro-life, but when it comes to sympathizing with somebody in that situation, I would be at a loss, and they may well think I am nothing but a religious fanatic, happy-clappy so-and-so. During my prayer the other week I read a chapter in Fulton J Sheen’s book Your Life is Worth Living. At the end of the chapter The late Archbishop of New York said that an 18yr old girl wrote to him once saying that she was from a well-to-do Catholic family, but walking home one night after a school dance, was raped, and was now with child. She wrote of how she was now frowned upon by family and friends alike. Imagine the pain. Sheen wrote back saying to her that what she was experiencing was the taking-on of the sin of another man. She carried her rapists sin on her shoulders in the form of loneliness, rejection, trauma…does that sound familiar? He wrote that though she took on the sin of one man, Jesus took on the sin of every human being who ever was, is, and will be….once again, wow…Jesus became sin for me so that I could become sin for another…

Suddenly the idea of suffering changes. Suddenly the bad experiences are not all bad anymore; suddenly nothing is all bad anymore. Suddenly I desire to be meek and gentle, and I realise that’s what real strength does - it lays itself down in surrender, unites its insecurities, fears, sufferings, to the perfect sufferings of Jesus, and so God is glorified. May His name be greatly praised.

“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth”

Be His hands & feet

For Herod feared John, knowing he was a righteous and holy man.” (Mk 6:20)

Let’s be honest; sometimes – no – many times we are scared to live out our faith both in word and in action. You know what I’m talking about. I can think of many situations, like when I’m sitting at McDonald’s in the highly populated food court of a shopping centre about to begin grace with that public gesture – the Sign of the Cross – when out of nowhere I am struck by fear. ‘What will all these people think? What will they say? As I bless myself I can just hear them conspiring to one another as to how they will go about eradicating the entire Catholic population. The question here is whether this fear of publicly living out our faith is a legitimate fear. Perhaps surprisingly, the answer is no. Perhaps even more surprisingly, I believe we have a lot to learn and a lot from which to take heed when it comes to this fear, by looking a little bit closer at King Herod’s fear of John the Baptist just two thousand years ago.

It is specifically the fears of prejudice, rejection, and a general feeling of intimidation, which fuel the greater fear of living out our faith as a witness to all the world. Our faith in God will tell us, however, that this intimidation is empty; this fear illegitimate as there are no substantial reasons as to why exactly we should be afraid; we could lose a friendship, but then we must ask ourselves upon what value – upon what perception of love – was that friendship built? What else can happen? We can receive some dirty looks and a few snide remarks, but the question must be asked: is it really worth living our lives trying to avoid such judgement from our society when it means we choose to live as cowards? John the Baptist chose not to be a coward; he chose to be fearless and courageous for the sake of God. He was a man so humble and filled with surrender to God that it allowed a power to be unleashed in him so much so that he seemed like a wild man, yet his heart was scarily attractive. If I were a woman, my heart would long for a man with a heart like John’s; as a man something in my heart longs to be as surrendered, as wild as John was.

 The truth of the matter is that because Jesus died and rose for us, and by His grace we can have eternal life, we have a rock on which to stand – a rock of peace, joy, love and salvation. We should never be intimidated by the ideologies which our society would prescribe as worthy objects of worship: money, material possessions, socio-economic status, and good looks. If we jump back a couple thousand years ago we will see these ideologies personified by King Herod. Herod had everything. He looked as though he was secure and comfortable enough in all of his status-building ‘stuff’ to never be afraid of anything – at least from a secular perspective he did. He was afraid though, of a man who by his standards had nothing, nothing but righteousness and holiness. When Herod saw John the Baptist he would have seen a man who seemed slightly insane yet spoke and taught with authority, and who relied on a King far greater than Herod. Herod was a Jew and so he would have known the Ten Commandments, and how he had repeatedly and unabashedly broken each one of them. When Herod saw the light that shone from the holiness of John, it would have revealed to him his own darkness and sin. Suddenly his ‘everything’ becomes nothing, and suddenly John’s nothing becomes everything. EVERYTHING!

What I believe Jesus is saying to me, to us, through this Gospel, is that it doesn’t matter how intimidating someone seems, or how it may hurt us to feel judged by someone who seems to have everything going for them, because the truth is they don’t. They don’t have it all together. Me? I have more than enough. We are called in each and every moment to know that we have more than enough. More than enough what? Grace! Love! We are called to let our own lights shine the love of Jesus every one of our brothers and sisters (that means everyone. Seriously, everyone). When we do this we will not be afraid to stand up for the Truth, and we will be like John and all the other saints, but most importantly we will be like Jesus. To those who are knowingly in the wrong we will seem scary; to those who are earnestly searching our lives will be attractive; and to those somewhere in between we will be scarily attractive, because true holiness demands a respect and a reverence that goes far beyond any passing persecution or insult. Inside each of our hearts we long for the same thing. John had it. Herod wanted it, and the fear he had was not so much a fear for John as it was a fear for the One whom John feared.

Jesus in us, if we allow Him to shine through, will demand respect and reverence, and people will know we are different – steadfast in not being tossed around by the winds of cultural norms. This is one way that Jesus calls us to be His hands & feet.