The Meek, Inheritors of the Earth

*Over the next several weeks, I will be reflecting on the beatitudes of Jesus.

~Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth~

The interesting thing about this beatitude is the promise Jesus makes to those who are meek. We know, for the most part, what it means to be meek. The meek person lives by a logic of gentleness. The meek person, no matter how serious the situation may be, never throws away their loving-kindness. [1] But Jesus says that the meek shall inherit the earth. What exactly does that mean? What are we saying when we say that the “people of the beatitudes” are the people who will become inheritors of the land?

Certainly Jesus’ promise has something to do with heaven. The meek, the gentle, are the kind of people who are inheritors of the “New Jerusalem.” But the Christian tradition has also insisted that, in this beatitude, Jesus is also talking about this world. There is a sense in which the meek are the true inheritors of this earth. What do we mean?

Let’s start by thinking of the opposite of meekness. I tend to think of the rise and fall of empires, of the coming and going of nations and dominions. There is, in the onward march of an invading army, the human attempt to possess the earth, to broaden the inheritance. This image of human strength ― to raise one’s flag over the earth ― stamps it with disharmony. In ancient times, most defeated populations were enslaved. Genghis Khan used to say that life’s greatest pleasure was in “vanquishing your enemies and robbing them of their wealth." When Caesar’s chariots pressed onward, he crushed and mangled the earth and its people. There was nothing gentle or meek about Caesar and his legions. 

Throughout history “Caesar” has always tried to dominate the land, to insist the land is really his dominion. But Caesars come and Caesars go. And that is precisely the point. The true inheritors of the earth ― the true possessors of that land ― are not the imperialists who’ve pillaged for it. In time, the empires have all fallen away. “The ones who remain,” Joseph Ratzinger once said, “are the simple, the humble, who cultivate the land and continue sowing and harvesting in the midst of sorrows and joys.” [2] The land does not belong to Caesar. The land does not belong to any person of power, no matter how much they say so. The land belongs to God. And that land is the inheritance, Jesus says, of the poor in spirit and of the meek. It is the inheritance of those who, at this moment, have been disinherited. Indeed, the story of a land is the story of its people ― the generations who’ve lived and worked upon it ― not the story of its conquerors and rulers.

It is no different today. I used to tell my students that, in spite of what might appear to be the case on the news, the real drama is not occurring out on the center stage of the world. The real drama is not occurring on your social media feeds. The real drama is happening in your heart. The world, right now, is going through an extraordinary time. It matters, of course, how world leaders react. You need to care about all that. But the highest drama of all is not how the Caesars will respond. The real question is this: how are you going to respond? To this virus? To this cultural moment’s questions about race? Are you becoming wiser? More just? More meek? Are we going to become people who truly see those around us who are hurting? Not just the ones on TV, five-hundred miles away, but are we going to see the people who are actually in our lives ― the ones we call friends and family ― and endure some harshness each day? Do you yet see that there are real people in your life in pain? Are these tumultuous days an invitation to see your poor-in-spirit a little better? An invitation to cultivate the small patch of your inheritance of earth? An invitation to be meek?

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~Anthony Rosselli (PhD cand., theology, University of Dayton) writes out of St. Luke and Ascension Parishes in Franklin County, Vermont. These columns are archived here.

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Endnotes:

[1] See the reflections on "Holy Meekness" in Dietrich von Hildebrand's Transformation in Christ (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2001), 407.

[2] Joseph Ratzinger, Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2007), 83.

2nd Sunday of Advent (and the Immaculate Conception)

Note: For the season of Advent, I've decided to focus these reflections on the Virgin Mary rather than the weekly Gospel.

On Mary's Immaculate Conception

There’s an unfortunate misconception about Mary, namely that she was a bit of a wimp. We tend to think of her as delicate, as someone who never spoke louder than a whisper. With her hands folded and head bowed, we’ve imprisoned a very fragile and lifeless Mary into our figurines and into our imaginations. Caryll Houselander was an old Catholic writer from the 1940s who talked about how, as a little girl, people encouraged her never to do something the Blessed Virgin wouldn’t do. The trouble was, she joked, “I simply could not imagine her doing anything at all.” The Mary in our minds is not very dynamic.

On account of this, the real Mary, the one who actually walked around, has become difficult for us to imagine. We forget that she was once a desperate refugee who escaped her hometown in the dead of night (Mt 2:14). We forget that Mary gave birth alongside animals (Lk 2:7). We don’t think of her as the kind of woman who, when she sings, sings about “scattering the arrogant in their conceit, throwing down the mighty from their thrones … and sending the rich away hungry” (Lk 1:51-53). Mary was no delicate little thing. When nearly everyone else fled for their lives ― even after they swore never to desert him (Mt 26:35) ― Mary remained with Jesus at the foot of the cross (Jn 19:25).

This confusion about Mary, in part, comes from a misunderstanding about her “Immaculate Conception,” which Catholics will celebrate this week. We often point out that the Immaculate Conception refers not to Jesus’ conception inside of Mary, but to Mary’s conception inside her mother. Indeed, the teaching is that, from the first moment she was conceived in her mother’s womb, Mary was “preserved free from all stain of original sin.” But there is a second way of misunderstanding the Immaculate Conception that applies to our problem. We misunderstand Mary’s sinlessness if we think it makes her totally unlike us. 

We must not think that, because Mary was sinless, she was somehow unapproachable, that she floated a few inches above the dirt. No. Mary was as gritty as her neighbors. She stoked flames and carried water. We certainly don’t think of Mary as the kind of woman with whom you’d split 2 liters of homemade wine, but that is how much the average Israelite drank each day. I don’t know about you, but I can’t drink that much! 

Mary’s holiness does not make her glide above us. It is just the opposite. It is precisely Mary’s freedom from sin that makes her most approachable, most ordinary, most one-of-us. Holiness does not lift one above normal human life, but makes one more richly engaged in the ordinary world. Indeed, to be sinless is not to be inhuman, but to be most human. More than that, her holiness made her most able to endure and engage the harshest turns life can take ― she was a refugee; she endured the public crucifixion of her son. Indeed, this is precisely what makes her able to sympathize with the harshness of your own life. You can talk to her about it. She’s been through it too. 

Mary was a woman, a real woman. She was a mother ― a real mother ― who loved her real son, not in some ethereal and untouchable way that has no meaning at all, but in the same gritty way that all mothers love their children. In my experience, there is nothing delicate about mothers. Mothers are not to be messed with. She wiped Jesus up, fed him, searched frantically for him when he snuck off (Lk 2:41-52). It’s all very ordinary; it’s just like any other mother. Indeed, what makes it extraordinary ― what makes her immaculate ― is that all this ordinariness is directed toward and oriented around the most extraordinary of children. She was willing to give the entirety of her ordinary human existence to the flourishing of her Son. For this “all generations will call her blessed” (Lk 1:48).

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Hating Your Father and Mother - 23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time

Luke 14:25-33
Great crowds were traveling with Jesus,
and he turned and addressed them,
“If anyone comes to me without hating his father and mother,
wife and children, brothers and sisters,
and even his own life,
he cannot be my disciple.
Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me
cannot be my disciple.
Which of you wishing to construct a tower
does not first sit down and calculate the cost
to see if there is enough for its completion? 
Otherwise, after laying the foundation
and finding himself unable to finish the work
the onlookers should laugh at him and say,
‘This one began to build but did not have the resources to finish.’
Or what king marching into battle would not first sit down
and decide whether with ten thousand troops
he can successfully oppose another king
advancing upon him with twenty thousand troops? 
But if not, while he is still far away,
he will send a delegation to ask for peace terms. 
In the same way,
anyone of you who does not renounce all his possessions
cannot be my disciple.”

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Jesus’ words this week are extraordinarily strong: “If anyone comes to me without hating his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.” It’s very difficult to water down Jesus’ language. The Greek word the passage uses for “hate” is misein. It means, quite simply, “to hate.” There’s no translating our way out of it. But this assertion, if we take it wholesale, conflicts with so much of what Christians value. One of the Ten Commandments insists we “honor our father and mother.” And Jesus, earlier in his ministry, commented that he has not come to abolish those commandments (Mt 5:18). So what gives? What is Jesus actually asserting in this week’s gospel? Should we really not love our families, but hate them?

I’d like to get at this in a somewhat roundabout way. I think what Jesus is doing here is similar to what a very strange man we now call “Saint Symeon the Holy Fool” did with his whole life in 6th century Syria. In his youth, Symeon had a profound desire for humility. He confided to a friend that he longed to be a saint, but in such a way that nobody could publicly recognize him as such. To that end, he entered a desert monastery in western Syria, hidden away from the eyes of the world. But after 29 years of this life, Symeon felt urgently that God was asking him to leave the monastery for life in the city. He was called, as he put it, “to mock the world.” And mock the world he did. 

The residents of Homs — the city in which Symeon lived out his days — were shocked by his extraordinary and offensive behavior. He arrived at the city gates dragging a dead dog by his belt. He was supposed to be a celibate monk, but spent most of his days hanging around the city brothel; several of the women even had reputations as his “girlfriends.” He often turned over the tables at the public market. At Mass, he would extinguish the candle lights and throw nuts at the congregants while they were resetting the sanctuary. Throughout Lent, he wore a chain of sausages around his neck like a priests’ stole. 

Symeon was, on the surface, an obnoxious madman; he was the town fool. Surely he got his wish: no one publicly recognized him as a saint. It’s hard to imagine even calling him a Christian. So why does the Church today honor him as “Saint” Symeon, just as much as it honors Saint Mother Teresa or Francis of Assisi? It might be easy to suggest that Symeon suffered from profound mental illness. But those who intimately knew him bore witness to his clear mind. Symeon knew very well that his actions were absurd. But he acted from the firm conviction that what he was doing was needed. Remember why Symeon left the monastery ― God had asked him to “mock the world.” But what is the meaning of Symeon’s mockery?

There is always, of course, more to the story besides Symeon’s public reputation. He went to brothels, yes, but only to gift the women money so they could avoid working. He publicly mocked the Church’s Lenten fasts, but then abstained rigorously from meat in his private life. But what explains his outrageous behavior generally speaking? What is motivating Symeon’s mockery? What Symeon sought, above all, was to disrupt the conventional ways of ordinary religious existence. In his city, people went to church and lit candles. They kept the Lenten fasts. But these were simply popular conventions. Symeon’s life forced people to really ask themselves why all of this mattered. Why do I need to abstain from meat? He brought liturgies to a screeching halt, but only because he wanted to stop people from merely going through the motions. Why, after all, do we need all these candles? What are we really doing at Mass?

I bring up Saint Symeon because I think Jesus is up to something similar in today’s gospel. Notice that, when Jesus says we must hate our families, a “great crowd” had been traveling behind him. This is a key element of the story. Indeed, on account of his miracles and preaching, Jesus had become popular, a celebrity even. The message of Jesus was becoming so popular that even large crowds could embrace it with ease. It is at this moment the text says Jesus “turned and addressed” this large crowd that had been following him with his disturbing words: you cannot come with me unless you hate your family. 

Do you see what Jesus is doing? In the same way that Saint Symeon sought to disrupt the sleepy forms of Christianity with his bizarre behaviors, so Jesus is seeking to disrupt the understanding of those in that “great crowd” who thought it would be easy to follow him. Christianity is not easy; it is no “pop spirituality.” “Narrow is the way,” Jesus says, “and few there are who walk it” (Mt 7:13-14). In order to remind people of this, Jesus has chosen the method of Saint Symeon the Holy Fool. Jesus intends to shock and disturb the crowds. He is the original holy fool. 

Does Jesus really want us to hate our families? Of course not. But Jesus does ― and this is the shocking, disruptive, outrageous thing ― want us to put himself before everything and everyone else, including our families. That claim ― a central claim of Christianity ― disturbs the normal order of our lives. And so Jesus, like Symeon, communicates this by shocking the people around him. He is trying to disturb you. Sometimes being disturbed is the only way we’ll notice.

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I Do Not Know Where You Are From - 21st Sunday in Ordinary Time

Luke 13:22-30
Jesus passed through towns and villages,
teaching as he went and making his way to Jerusalem. 
Someone asked him,
"Lord, will only a few people be saved?" 
He answered them,
"Strive to enter through the narrow gate,
for many, I tell you, will attempt to enter
but will not be strong enough. 
After the master of the house has arisen and locked the door,
then will you stand outside knocking and saying,
'Lord, open the door for us.'
He will say to you in reply,
'I do not know where you are from.
And you will say,
'We ate and drank in your company and you taught in our streets.'
Then he will say to you,
'I do not know where you are from. 
Depart from me, all you evildoers!'
And there will be wailing and grinding of teeth
when you see Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob
and all the prophets in the kingdom of God
and you yourselves cast out.
And people will come from the east and the west
and from the north and the south
and will recline at table in the kingdom of God. 
For behold, some are last who will be first,
and some are first who will be last."

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Something to bear in mind about the question Jesus received ― “will only a few people be saved?” ― is that the questioner is asking Jesus to weigh in on a common dispute among Jews from that time. Remember that the Jews understood themselves as God’s “chosen people,” his special nation among all the nations of the earth. In the mind of the person asking this question, only Jews could be saved. Their real question is this: were all Jews part of the chosen people? Even the adulterers and murderers who called themselves Jewish? Would they too be saved? Not all rabbis agreed on the answer to that question. In the scenes leading up to this moment, John the Baptist and Jesus had been warning people about the dire consequences to some of their actions. It makes sense that the crowds would wonder if these consequences included exclusion from God’s chosen ones. 

The first thing to see in Jesus’ response is his insistence that one’s Judaism ― in a purely ethnic sense ― will not admit them into the Kingdom of Heaven. Insofar as the questioner presupposes that only Jews can be saved, their question is the wrong question. And so Jesus’ response insists that not only can Jews “attempt to enter [the Kingdom] but [then] not be strong enough,” but people from all the other non-Jewish Gentile nations, “from the east and from the west and from the north and the south, will recline at the table in the Kingdom of God.” It is important to see that, in this passage, Jesus is not really commenting on the population of heaven as much as he’s commenting on the kind of people who end up there. And his basic point is not that heaven is crowded or empty, but that it’s populated by more than just Jews. This helps explain the little parable Jesus offers. When “the master” comments that he does not know these people who are knocking and expecting entry into the Kingdom, notice that they insist they “ate and drank in [his] company.” This is their way of saying, “We are Jews like you! We ate the Passover with you! You taught in our streets! What do you mean you don’t know us?!” Let’s set aside the irony that the same people who accused Jesus of being “a glutton and a drunkard” for dining with sinners and tax-collectors (Lk 7:34) are now eager to recall their meals with him. Jesus’ broader point is clear: Yes, the Jews are God’s chosen people, but that is not the sole criterion for entry into the Kingdom. 

So then how does one enter through the narrow gate? What does it mean to participate in the Kingdom? Jesus’ parable insists that those in the Kingdom are known by the master of the house. He recognizes them, like you might recognize your friend unexpectedly in the market. This is a claim that is, in one sense, frightening and, in another, exciting. It’s frightening because we can be just as naive as the person who questioned Jesus to start our reflection. We don’t really believe that, just because we come to church, just because we “eat and drink in his company” each Sunday, that the Lord necessarily knows who we are, do we? The frightening theme to this week’s gospel is the possibility that, when all is said and done, when I meet my maker, we might not recognize each other. 

But the flip side to that warning includes a marvelous invitation. Namely that being familiar with the Lord ― speaking with him from my heart, opening my wounds to him, revealing my fears to him, dining with him in the Eucharist and not just mechanically receiving him, confessing my weakness to him, meditating upon his life ― these acts of familiarity with Jesus mean that he knows me ― he’s heard my voice and my story ― and this familiarity is already the beginning of my participation in the Kingdom of Heaven. 

It’s a very homely image for Jesus to use ― Jesus says the master will recognize us. Think of seeing your close friend after many years. Think of the familiarity and excitement you feel at their sight. This is how Jesus describes the first look between God and the person who’s just died ― they recognize each other even though they’ve never fully met, and not because of their human ancestry, and not merely because he or she was in the pew each Sunday, but because they are somehow old and familiar friends.