Blessed Are the Meek

 March 31, 2026

Hello!  How is each and every one?  We are now in Holy Week itself, Tuesday of Holy Week. We will be attending The Sacred Easter Paschal Triduum, from Holy Thursday, Good Friday and Black Saturday in our parishes.  The Daily Roman Missal writes: 

Christ redeemed us all and gave perfect glory to God principally through his paschal mystery:  dying he destroyed our death and rising he restored our life.  Therefore the Easter Triduum of the Passion and Resurrection of the Lord is the culmination of the entire liturgical year. Thus the solemnity of Easter has the same kind of preeminence in the liturgical year that Sunday has in the week. 

Let the paschal fast be kept sacred.  Let it be celebrated everywhere on Good Friday and wherever possible, prolonged throughout Holy Saturday, as a way of coming to the joys of the Sunday of the resurrection with uplifted and welcoming heart.

These days are therefore unique in the liturgical year and their celebration is of the utmost importance in the spiritual and pastoral life of the Church.

THE MASS OF THE LORD’S SUPPER

At this supper on the night he was betrayed, the Lord Jesus, loving those who were his own in the world even to the end, offered his body and blood to the Father under the appearances of bread and wine, gave them to the apostles to eat and drink, then enjoined the apostles and their successors in the priesthood to offer them in turn.

This Mass is, first of all, the memorial of the institution of the Eucharist, that is, of the memorial of the Lord’s Passover, by which under sacramental signs he perpetuated among us the sacrifice of the New Law.

Visita Iglesia is a traditional Holy Week devotion (often on Holy Thursday) involving visiting Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament in different churches to adore Him in the Blessed Sacrament.

CELEBRATION OF THE LORD’S PASSION

On this day, when “Christ our paschal lamb was sacrificed” (1 Cor 5: 7), what had long been promised in signs and figures was at last revealed and brought to fulfillment.  The true lamb replaced the symbolic lamb, and the many offerings of the past gave way to the single sacrifice of Christ.

The Way of the Cross (Via Crucis) on Good Friday:  A solemn Catholic devotion commemorating Christ’s final hours, Passion, and death across 14 stations.  The stations trace the journey from being condemned to death to being laid in the tomb.  Notable stations include Jesus taking up the cross, meeting his mother, falling three times, and Simon of Cyrene helping him.  Notable too are Christ’s Seven Last Words on the Cross.

Following is another word elaborating on the first word of Jesus on the Cross (From The Cries of Jesus from the Cross, A Fulton J. Sheen’s Anthology). Every word of Christ on the Cross has 6 other elaborations.

Our blessed Lord began His public life on the mount of the Beatitudes, by preaching: “Blessed are the meek: for they shall possess the land” (Matt. 5:4). He finished His public life on the Hill of Calvary by practicing that meekness: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34).

How different this is from the beatitude of the world! The world blesses not the meek, but the vindictive; it praises not the one who turns the other cheek, but the one who renders evil for evil; it exalts not the humble, but the aggressive. Communism has carried that spirit of violence, class struggle, and the clenched fist to an extreme the likes of which the world had never seen. To correct such a warlike attitude of the clenched fist, Our Lord both preached and practiced meekness. He preached it in those memorable words that continue the Beatitudes: 

You have heard that it hath been said: An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. But I say to you not to resist evil: but if one strike thee on thy right cheek, turn to him also the other: and if a man will contend with thee in judgment, and take away thy coat, let go thy cloak also unto him. And whosoever shall force thee one mile, go with him other two. . . . You have heard that it hath been said: Thou shalt love your neighbor and hate thy enemy. But I say to you: Love your enemies: do good to them that hate you: and pray for them that persecute and calumniate you that you may be the children of your Father who is in heaven, who maketh His sun to rise upon the good and bad, and raineth upon the just and the unjust. For if you love them that love you, what reward shall you have? Do not even the publicans do this? And if you salute your brethren only, what do you more? Do not also the heathens this? Be you, therefore, perfect, as also your heavenly Father is perfect. (Matt. 5:38–48). 

But He not only preached meekness; He practiced it. When His own people picked up stones to throw at Him, He threw none back in return; when His fellow townsmen brought Him to the brow of the hill to cast Him over the precipice, He walked through their midst unharmed; when the soldier struck Him with a mailed fist and made the Savior feel by anticipation the clenched fist of communism, He answered meekly: “If I have spoken evil, give testimony of the evil: but if well, why strikest thou me?” (John 18:23).

When they swore to kill Him, He did not use His power to strike dead even a single enemy; and now on the Cross, meekness reaches its peak, when to those who dig the hands that feed the world, and to those who pierce the feet that shepherd souls, He pleads: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

Which is right — the violence of communism or the meekness of Christ? Communism says meekness is weakness. But that is because it does not understand the meaning of Christian meekness. Meekness is not cowardice; meekness is not an easygoing temperament, sluggish and hard to arouse; meekness is not a spineless passivity, which allows everyone to walk over us. No! Meekness is self-possession. That is why the reward of meekness is possession. 

A weak person can never be meek, because he is never self-possessed; meekness is that virtue that controls the combative, violent, and pugnacious powers of our nature, and it is therefore the best and noblest road to self-realization.

The meek man is not a man who refuses to fight, nor is he a man who will never become angry. A meek man is a man who will never do one thing: he will never fight when his conceit is attacked, but only when a principle is at stake. And there is the keynote to the difference between the anger of the communist and the anger of the meek man.

Communism begins at the moment conceit is attacked; fists clench and rise as soon as the ego is challenged; cheeks flush as soon as self-love is wounded; and blood boils and flows at that split second when pride is humbled. 

The anger of the communist is based on selfishness; he hates the rich not because he loves the poor in spirit, but because he wants to be rich himself. Every communist is really a capitalist without any cash in his pockets. Selfishness is the world’s greatest sin; that is why the world hates those who hate it, why it is jealous of those who have more; why it is envious of those who do more; why it dislikes those who refuse to flatter; and why it scorns those who tell us the truth about ourselves. Its whole life is inspired by the egotistical, and the personal, and its wrath is born of that self-love. 

Now consider the anger of the meek man. For the meek man, not selfishness but righteousness is his guiding principle. He is so possessed, he never allows his fists to go up for an unholy purpose, or in defense of his pride or vanity, or conceit, or because he wants the wealth of another. Only the principles of God’s righteousness arouse a meek man. Moses was a meek man, but he broke the tablets of stone when he found his people were disobeying God.

Our Lord is meekness itself, and yet He drove the buyers and sellers from the Temple when they prostituted His Father’s house; but when He came to the doves, He was so self-possessed that He gently released them from the cages. He is so much master of Himself that He is angry only when holiness is attacked, but never when His person is attacked. That is why when the Gerasenes besought Our Lord to leave their coasts, without a single retort, “entering into a boat, He passed over the water and came into His own city” (Matt. 9:1).

That is why when men laughed Him to scorn, He said nothing but approached the dead daughter of Jairus, and went on His work of mercy, oblivious to their insults, and restored her to life. That is why He addressed Judas as “Friend” when he blistered his lips with a kiss. That is why Our Lord from the Cross prays for the forgiveness of His enemies. Their wrath directed against His body He will not return, though He might have smitten them all dead by the power of His divinity. Rather, He forgives them, for “they know not what they do.”

If ever innocence had a right to protest against injustice, it was in the case of Our Lord. And yet he extends pardon. Their insults to His Person, He ignores. Had He not preached meekness? Now must He not practice it?

And how could He practice it better than to pray for those who were crucifying Him? And what greater meekness could there be than to excuse them because they knew not what they did. What a lesson for us to remember: that those who do us harm may, too, be of the same type of misguided consciences as those who crucified Christ.  

 

From that dread day on, there have been two motives for withdrawing from battle: either because we are afraid or because we are husbanding our energies for a more important battle. The second kind is the meekness of Our Lord. 

Be not angry, then, when your conceit is attacked. It will do no harm. As Our Lord reminds us: “Blessed are they that suffer persecution for justice’s sake; for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 5:10).

In contrast to this Christian philosophy of forgiveness, there exist for the first time in the history of the world a philosophy and a political and social system based not on love, but on hate, and that is communism. Communism believes that the only way it can establish itself is by inciting revolution, class struggle, and violence. Hence its regime is characterized by a hatred of those who believe the family is the basic unit of society. The very communistic gesture of the clenched fist is a token of its pugnacious and destructive spirit, and a striking contrast indeed to the nailed hand of the Savior pleading forgiveness for the clenched-fisted generation who sent Him to the Cross.

It is startling indeed to recall that we followers of Our Lord believe in violence just as much as do the communists. Has not Our Lord said: “The kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent bear it away” (Matt. 11:12)? But here is the difference: communists believe in violence to one’s neighbor; we believe in violence to ourselves. Communists struggle against all who refuse to have the same hate; we struggle against ourselves, our lower passions, our concupiscence, our selfishness, our egotism, our sensuality, and our meanness — in a word, against all that prevents us from realizing the best and highest things in our nature. Communism crucifies its enemies; we crucify that which makes us think anyone is our enemy. Communism hates the love of Christians; we hate that which makes us hate communists. If communists used as much violence on their selfishness as they use on others, they would all be saints! 

Their hatred is weakness, for it refuses to see that collective selfishness is just as wrong as individual selfishness; it is the weakness of the man who is not self-possessed, who uses his fist instead of his mind, who resorts to violence for the same reason the ignorant man resorts to blasphemy; namely, because he has not sufficient intellectual strength to express himself otherwise.

What, then, must be our attitude toward the hatred communists bear to us? It must be the attitude of the Holy Father, who asked us to pray for the communists. It must be the attitude of those Spanish priests who, before being shot by the communists, asked them to kneel down and receive their blessing and their forgiveness. And what is this but a reflection of Our Lord’s attitude on the Cross: meekness, love, and forgiveness?

What must be our attitude toward communism? We must possess a strength, a force, and a daring that exposes its errors and goes down to death on the Cross rather than accept the least of its principles of hate. 

They will not love us for our meekness, and it will be hard for us not to be angry when our conceit and our pride, and possibly our possessions, are attacked; but there is no escaping the divine injunction: “Blessed are ye when they shall revile you, and persecute you, and speak all that is evil against you, untruly, for my sake: Be glad and rejoice for your reward is very great in heaven” (Matt. 5:11–12). “If the world hate you, know ye that it has hated me before you. If you had been of the world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you” (John 15:18–19). “The hour cometh that whosoever killeth you will think that he doth a service to God” (John 16:2). 

If, then, we have enemies, let us forgive them. If we suffer unjustly, then we can practice the virtue of charity. If we suffer justly, and we probably do, for we have sins to atone for, then we can practice the virtue of justice. 

What right have we to hate others, since our own selfishness is often the cause of their hatred? The first word from the Cross and the Beatitude of meekness both demand that we tear up self-love by the roots; love our executioners; forgive them, for they know not what they do; do a favor for those who insult us; be kind to the thieves who accuse us of theft; be forgiving to liars who denounce us for lying; be charitable to the adulterers who charge us with impurity.

Be glad and rejoice for their hate. It will harm only our pride, but not our character; it will cauterize our conceit, but not blemish our soul — for the very insult of the world is the consecration of our goodness.

We know it is not the worldly thing to do — to pray for those who nail us to a cross. But that is just the point: Christianity is not worldliness; it is turning the world upside down. We know it is not “common sense” to love our enemies, for to love our enemies means hating ourselves; but that is the meaning of Christianity — hating that which is hateful in us. And in reference to communism let me say: I hate communism because it is destructive of civilization, as Russia and Spain so well prove, but I love the communists. I love them because they are the potential children of God.

Our enemy is often our Savior; our persecutor is often our redeemer; our executioners are often our allies; our crucifiers are often our benefactors — for they reveal what is selfish, base, conceited, and ignoble in us. But we must not hate them for that. To hate them for hating us is weakness. 

If we go on answering hate with hate, how will hate ever end? The violent answer to violence is the propagation of further violence; strife increases the sum of bitterness, regardless of who triumphs. Hate is like a seed: if we sow it, we reap more hate. If hatred is to be overcome, the sting must be taken out of it; it must not be nourished, or cultivated, or propagated. But how can this be, except by returning good for evil?

How else can we banish hatred from the earth? Suppose five thousand men are in line and before them is a communist propagandist telling them that the only way they can overthrow governments and property is by violence, revolution, and the clenched fist. Suppose the first man in line, inspired by that communist’s hatred, strikes the second man in line on the right cheek; the second raises his clenched fist to strike the third; the third wishes to strike the right cheek of the fourth, and on and on clenched fists fly — because their gospel is hate.

Is there any way at all to stop that hatred and violence? Yes, on one condition, and that is if one man in that line who is struck on his right cheek, instead of striking his neighbor, turns and offers to the one who struck him his left cheek. He would kill hatred because he refused to sow it. 

Hatred would no longer have soil on which it could grow, for hatred can grow on a right cheek but never on a left cheek: “If any man strikes thee on the right cheek, turn the other cheek” (see Matt. 5:39).

That is not weakness; it is strength, the strength that makes man master of himself and the conqueror of hate.

 

If you doubt it, try it sometime to see how much strength it takes. It took so much strength that only Divinity’s cry of forgiveness could overcome the hatred of those who crucify.

 

If you have enemies, if they hate you, if they revile you, and persecute you and say all manner of evil things against you, and you wish to stop their hatred, to release the hatred in their clenched fists, drive them off the face of the earth — then there is but one way to do it: love them!

— The Cross and the Beatitudes

I suppose the above material is more than enough to fill up our quiet moments of dialogue with Our Lord in these coming days of the Holy Week.

Let us accompany Jesus in His Passion, Death and Resurrection with prayer, love and devotion, active participation and presence as far as possible.

See you in the next post, “May tomorrow be a perfect day; may you find love and laughter along the way; may God keep you in his tender care; ‘til He brings us together again.”

Affectionately,                    

Guadalupinky