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.