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.”