THE REAL PRESENCE Saint Peter Julian Eymard Founder, Blessed Sacrament Fathers JESUS, MEEK AND HUMBLE OF HEART Discite a Me, quia mitis sum et humilis corde. Learn of Me, because I am meek and humble of heart. (Matthew xi. 29.) JESUS teaches us by His Eucharistic mode of existence to abase ourselves in order to resemble Him. Friendship wants equality of life and of condition. To live of the Eucharist we must abase ourselves with Jesus Who abases Himself therein. Let us penetrate into the Heart, into the soul of Jesus. Let us see what sentiments animated Him and still animate Him in the Sacrament. We belong to Jesus Hostia; does He not give Himself to us in order to absorb us in Himself? We must live of His spirit and listen to His teachings, for Jesus is our Teacher in the Eucharist. He Himself wants to show us how to serve Him according to His taste and His will. This is quite right since He is our Lord and we are only His servants. Jesus reveals His spirit to me in these words: "Learn of Me that I am meek and humble of heart." When the sons of Zebedee wanted to call down fire from Heaven to consume a city that refused to receive their Master, Jesus said to them: "You know not of what spirit you are." Nescitis cujus spiritus estis. The spirit of Jesus, therefore, is humility and meekness; that is to say, a humility and meekness of heart that is loved and accepted out of love in order to resemble Jesus Christ. Our Lord wants to form these virtues in us; that is why He remains in the Sacrament and comes into us. He wants to be our Master in the acquisition of these virtues; we can learn them and receive the grace of them from Him alone. I HUMILITY of heart is the tree which yields the flower and the fruit of meekness. Discite a Me, quia humilis corde. "Learn of Me that I am humble of heart." Jesus says humble of heart; but was He not also humble of mind? Jesus was not subject to the negative humility of the mind, which is based on the sinfulness and nothingness of our corrupt nature. He nevertheless acted as if He was, in order to set us an example. Thus, although He was without sin, He humbled Himself like a sinner. He had nothing to be ashamed of. As the good thief put it: Hic nihil mali gessit. "This man hath done no evil." But we have everything to be ashamed of. We have done a great deal of evil and do not even know all the evil we are guilty of. Jesus was not subjected to the ignorance of our fallen nature. But we know nothing; we know only what is evil. We distort the notion of justice and goodness. In spite of His knowing everything, Jesus had the humility of one who knows nothing; He lived in retirement for thirty years, learning all the while. He was endowed with all the natural gifts. He knew and could do everything to perfection, but He did not show it. He did His work with no special skill, after the fashion of an apprentice. Nonne hic est jabri filius? "Is not this the carpenter's son?" people said, "a carpenter like His father?" Jesus never displayed that He knew everything. Even in His teachings, He declared that He was merely repeating the words of His Father. He limited Himself to His mission and fulfilled it in the simplest and humblest manner. He behaved like a man who is really humble of mind. He never boasted of anything, never sought to shine, or pass for a wit, or seem better informed than others. Even in the Temple when He stood in the midst of the doctors, He listened to them and asked them questions to improve His knowledge. Audientem illos, et interrogantem eos. Jesus had the positive humility of the mind which consists not in humiliating oneself in one's misery, but in referring to God what is good and in humiliating oneself in one's good deeds. He was dependent for all things on His Father. He consulted Him, and obeyed those who took His place on earth. He referred to His Father the glory of everything that was good. The positive humility of His mind was magnificent, wonderful, Divine. Ego autem non quaero gloriam meam. "But I seek not Mv own glory." But it does give Him glory; it is a humility born of love and good will. We ought to have the negative humility of the mind because we are sinners and ignorant; it is an obligation of justice. The fact that we are the followers and servants of Jesus adds another reason why we should practice that kind of humility. In His commandment to be humble, however, Jesus spoke to us only of humility of the heart. It seemed to Him in His love for us that to mention humility of the mind would humiliate us too much. It would recall too much wretchedness, too many sins, and too many reasons to be despised for. The love of Jesus threw a veil over this distressing aspect of the problem and invited us to be like Him, to have humility of heart: humiles corde. But what is humility of the heart? It consists in receiving humiliations from God with a submissive love, as if they were something that is good or that glorifies Him exceedingly; in accepting one's state of life and one's duties whatever they are, and in not being ashamed of one's condition; in acting simply and naturally when favored with extraordinary graces from God. If I love Jesus, I ought to resemble Him; if I love Jesus, I ought to love what He loves, what He does, what He prefers to all else: humility. Humility of the heart is easier than humility of the mind, since it is merely concerned with a very high and noble ideal; namely, to resemble Jesus Christ, to love and glorify Him in the sublime circumstances in which He practiced this type of humility. Have we this humility of heart, or rather this love of the humility of Jesus? Perhaps we have the humility that goes with devotedness, glory, and success, and that gives itself purely and without any motive of human glory; but we have not the humility which descends with John the Baptist, who abased and concealed himself and was happy to be set aside for our Lord; we have not the humility of Jesus in the Sacrament, hidden and humiliated to glorify His Father. Our love of the humility of Jesus is His glory and victory in us; around it must be fought the real battle which is to mark our triumph over the natural man in us. There is the humility that is practiced in the days of prosperity and plenty, in the hour of success and glory, and in time of power. This sort of humility ought to be quite easy; for we find a certain joy in humbling ourselves, that is, in giving God the glory of our actions. But there is the positive humility of the heart which is called for when exterior and interior humiliations assail the mind, the heart, the body, and our undertakings: a real storm that overwhelms us. That is the humility of our Lord and of all the Saints. To love God in such circumstances and to thank Him for our condition, that is to he truly humble of heart. How may we acquire this virtue? Neither logic nor reflection will help us any; thinking nice thoughts about it or taking heroic resolutions would lead us to believe we had already acquired it, and we would content ourselves with that. We must simply enter into the mind of our Lord; we must observe and consult Him, and act under His Divine influence, in partnership with Him, out of love for Him. We must concentrate our thoughts on His Divine humility of heart and offer our actions to Him, humiliated out of love in His Sacrament and preferring this obscure condition to any glory; we must examine our actions to see whether we have not sought our own interest in them. Let us repeat often: "Jesus, so humble of heart, make our hearts like unto Thine." II MEEKNESS is the fruit of humility of heart; that is why Jesus is meek. This virtue forms, as it were, the true characteristic of His life; it is the soul of it. "Learn of Me that I am meek!" He does not say: "Learn of Me that I am penitent, poor, wise, silent; but that I am meek." Why? Because fallen man is naturally and fundamentally irascible, full of hatred, irritable, revengeful, homicidal in his heart, fierce of eye, malicious in his speech, and violent in his members. Wrath is natural to him because he is proud, ambitious, and sensual; because he is unhappy and humiliated in his fallen state. He is of a sour disposition, as we say of a man who has suffered unjustly. Interior meekness. Our Lord is meek in His heart. He loves His neighbor, seeks his welfare, and thinks only of the good He can do him. He judges His neighbor according to His mercy only and not His justice; the hour of justice has not yet come. Jesus is a tender mother, the Good Samaritan. The weak child, the sinner, the just man, everyone shares in the tender affection of His Heart. This Heart is not indignant in the least against those who despise Him, who insult Him, who wish or do Him harm, or who are making ready to do so. He knows them all and has nothing but compassion for them. He feels sorry for their unhappy state. Videns civitatem, flevit super illam. "Seeing the city, He wept over it." Jesus is meek by nature; He is the Lamb of God. He is meek out of virtue, in order to glorify His Father by this state. He is meek out of obedience to His Father; meekness was to be His characteristic so that He might attract sinners, encourage them to come to Him, attach them to Him, and establish them in the law of God. We are greatly in need of this meekness of heart. We are without it; very often we are quite irritable in our thoughts and judgments. We judge persons and things too much from our own standpoint or from that of success, and we crush those who oppose us. We ought to judge them like our Lord, either with His holiness or with His mercy; we would then be always charitable, and we would not lose our peace of heart. Jugis pax cum humili. "Lasting peace is the lot of the humble." If we foresee that we are to meet with contradiction, how our imagination boils over with arguments, proofs, and convincing replies! But how unlike this is to the meekness of the Lamb! It is self-love which sees only its own self and its interests. If we are in authority, we see only ourselves, the duties of our inferiors, the virtues they ought to have, the heroism of obedience, the strong hand in commanding, the obligation of humiliating and crushing others, the example to be made; all that is not worth a single act of meekness. "Let him that commands become the most humble," says our Savior. We are and ought to be only the disciples of the Master Who is meek and humble of heart,-----Servus servorum Dei. "Servant of the servants of God," and not army generals. Why do we make a show of so much power, and this so frequently, against what opposes us? Why this anger, which is certainly not holy, against what is evil, against the unbelievers and the impious? Alas! At bottom it is our vanity urging us on. We imagine we are giving evidence of energy, when we are merely being impatient and cowardly. Our Lord would have pity on those poor people. He would pray for them and, in His relations with them, would try to honor His Father by meekness and humility. Besides, this vehemence and sharpness of manner gives bad example. O my God! Make my heart meek like Thine! Meekness of mind. Jesus is meek in His mind. In all things He sees only God His Father; and in men, the creatures of God, He is a father, weeping over his wayward children and trying to bring them back home; dressing their wounds no matter what may have caused them; and eager to restore Divine life to them. His mind is all taken up with the thought of His fatherhood and with grief over the unhappy condition of His children. He is worried over their well-being and is working for it. He does this in a spirit of peace and not of anger, indignation, or revenge. Thus David wept over his guilty son, Absalom, and ordered his life to be spared. Thus Mary, the Mother of sorrows, wept over the executioners of her Son and obtained their forgiveness.   True charity thrives, in the mind as well as in the heart, on the restoration of what was good, and not on the sight of evil and the means of avenging it. It never divorces man from his present or future supernatural state. It looks at him in God so as not to see in him an enemy; charity is meek and patient. The evil tendencies we have unearthed in our heart are likewise to be found in our mind and in our imagination, which stir up so many storms within us and would have us use violence right and left. We must stop these revolts; one pleading look to Jesus, and calm will be restored. III MEEK in His heart and in His mind, Jesus was quite naturally so in His exterior demeanor. The meekness of Jesus was like the sweet fragrance of His charity and holiness. It controlled all the movements of His body. There was nothing violent about His gestures; they were dignified like His thoughts and feelings, of which they were the expression. He walked slowly, without precipitation; wisdom regulated everyone of His movements. His body, His bearing, His dress, everything about Him spoke of order, poise, and peace. It was the reign in Him of a meek modesty; for modesty is the meekness of the body as well as its glory. Our Savior held His head in a modest attitude, that had nothing haughty, arrogant, or domineering about it; nor, on the other hand, was it too mean or too timid. Its attitude was that of a simple and unassuming modesty. His eyes expressed no feeling of anger or indignation. They had a look of respect for superiors, of love for His Mother and Saint Joseph at Nazareth, of kindness for His disciples, of tender compassion for sinners, and of merciful forgiveness for His enemies. Meekness enthronged on His sacred lips. He opened them with modesty and gentle gravity. Our Savior spoke little. No buffoonery, no word of raillery or of curiosity ever crossed His lips. All His words, like His thoughts, were the fruit of wisdom. He made use of' expressions that were simple, always becoming and within the reach of His hearers, who for the most part were poor and ordinary folk. Our Lord avoided any offensive personal remarks when He preached. He attacked only the vices of a school, of a caste, also the bad examples and scandals. He did not reveal hidden crimes or secret defects. He did not shun those who hated Him. He left no duty undone, no truth unsaid out of fear, or to avoid being contradicted, or to please some personage or other. He was never hasty in making reproaches, nor did He utter any prophecy concerning Himself before the time set by His Father. He lived in unvarying simplicity and meekness with those who were to desert Him, although He knew who they were; since the time to speak had not yet come, the future was to Him as if He knew it not. Our Lord was wonderfully patient with all the crowds that harassed Him. He was delightfully calm in the midst of all the agitations, requests, and unreasonable demands of an uncouth and earthly-minded people. What is still more admirable is the great calm, gentleness, and kindness of our Lord's life with disciples that were rude, unintelligent, touchy, selfish, and vain over their association with the Master. Our Lord showed the same love to all. He did not play favorites, nor was He specially familiar with anyone. Jesus was sweetness, meekness, and love. If we compare our life to that of Jesus Christ, what a condemnation! Our self-love becomes edged like a sword when it deals with certain persons whose lives and characters are particularly offensive to our pride. These fits of impatience, these reproaches, and these trenchant airs all spring from our laziness, which wants promptly to get rid of or be freed from some obstacle, sacrifice or duty, and which makes us avoid them or finish them with precipitation. Alas! That posing, those airs, and those words are, in truth, quite ridiculous. I hope the Good Master has pity on us for it all; it comes from childishness or stupidity. It is to be noted that meekness with the great or with those who can cater to our vanity is weakness, adulation, cowardice, and that the use of force on the weak is inhuman; the humiliating of others is often but a secret revenge. a My God! . . . IV THE meekness of Jesus scored its greatest triumph in His virtue of silence. Jesus, Who was come to regenerate the world, began by keeping silence in public for thirty years. And yet, there were so many vices to reform in the world, so many wandering souls to bring back, so many imperfections in Divine worship, so many transgressions among the Levites and the rulers of the nation! Our Lord reproves no one. He is content with praying, with doing penance, and with resisting evil and asking God's pardon for it. What beautiful things our Lord could have said during those thirty years for our instruction and consolation! He did not say them. He listened to the ancients and attended the instructions given in the synagogue by the scribes and the doctors of the Law, just like a simple Israelite from the lowest rank of the people. He could have reprimanded and reformed delinquents; but He did not. It was not yet the time. He was Uncreated Wisdom, the Word of God, the Creator of speech, and the Source of truth, but He did not speak. He honored His Father by His meek and humble silence. His silence tells us more eloquently than words, "Learn that I am meek and humble of heart." Oh! What a condemnation of our life! We talk nonsense, often speaking of what we do not know, solving doubtful matters by declaring them certain, asserting and imposing our own opinion. How often we say things we ought not to say, and reveal what the most elementary humility should hush! And so our Lord treats us like loquacious or impertinent persons. He lets us do all the talking, but to our own confusion. His thought is not one with ours, and His grace is not in our words to make them effective. The silence of Jesus was patient. He listened to everything others had to say to Him without ever interrupting them, although He knew beforehand what they were going to say; He answered them Himself. He reproved and corrected people with kindness like the best of masters would a young pupil, without humiliating anyone or hurting anyone's feelings. He listened to things unpleasant to hear and irrelevant to the topic of conversation. He always managed to find an opportunity to instruct and do good. With us, things are altogether different. We cannot withhold an answer on matters we are well acquainted with. We are bored to have to listen to what delays or crosses us. We show it in our face and manner. That is not the spirit of our Lord, not even of a well-bred man, of a good and honest pagan. There are a host of circumstances in life when pa- tience, meekness, and a humble silence become the virtue of the moment and must be, in God's sight, the only fruit of a time we think lost. His grace tells us so. Let us hearken to His voice and obey Him simply and faithfully. What shall we say of the meekness of our Lord's silence in the time of suffering? Jesus was habitually silent when confronted with the incredulity of several of His disciples, or with the wickedness and ingratitude of the heart of Judas, whose perfidious thoughts and infamous machinations He well knew. Jesus was self-possessed, calm, and affectionate with everyone as if He knew nothing. He carried on His usual relations with them and respected His Father's secret concerning them. Oh! What a lesson against rash judgments, suspicions, and secret antipathies!. Jesus gave precedence to the law of charity and social duties over" His knowledge of the secret of hearts, because such was the order of Divine Providence. Before His judges Jesus declared with simplicity the truth of His mission and of His Divinity. Before the High Priests He declared that He is the Son of God, and before the Roman governor, that He is King. He remained silent in the presence of the curious and lascivious Herod. He kept the silence of a convict while the Praetorian Guard made sacrilegious and mocking sport of Him. He accepted without complaint the stripes of the scourging, the affront of the Ecce Homo. He did not appeal at the reading of His unjust condemnation. He accepted His Cross with love and ascended Calvary in the midst of the curses, the insults, and the ill-treatment of all the people. When the malice of men had spent itself and the executioners had done their work, then He opened His mouth and spoke: "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do!" Ah! How can such a sight fail to break our heart. with sorrow and move it with love! What shall we say about the Eucharistic meekness of Jesus? How express in words His kindness in receiving everybody; His affability in stooping to the level of everybody, the poor and the ignorant; His patience in listening to what everybody has to say and in lending ear to the tale of all our troubles; His kindness in Communion in which He gives Himself according to the disposition of each one, and comes to all with joy, provided He finds in them the life of grace and some little feeling of devotion, or a few good desires, and at least a minimum of respect! How express His generosity in giving every communicant the amount of grace he can carry and in paying for the soul's hospitality with His peace and love. And what patient and merciful meekness towards those who forget Him! He waits for them. He prays for those who spurn and offend Him, but He does not complain, nor does He threaten them. He does not punish at once those who outrage Him sacrilegiously, but tries to win them over to repentance by His meekness and kindness. The Eucharist is the triumph of the meekness of Jesus Christ. WHAT are the means for acquiring the meekness of Jesus? It is easy to see the beauty, the good, and even the necessity of a virtue, especially of meekness but to go no further is to act like the patient who has at hand the remedy that will cure him but does not take it; or like a traveler who is content to sit down comfortably and look at the road on which he has to journey. The best means for acquiring the meekness of the Heart of Jesus is the love of our Lord. Love always tends to effect identity of life between those who love each other. Love will make use of three means to achieve this result. Love will first put out the flaming fires of anger, impatience: and violence by warring against self-love, which is manifested in the three concupiscences of the heart. We feel provoked because some obstacle checks our sensuality, our pride, and our desire to cut a figure or to receive honors. To fight against these three ruling passions is to attack the enemies of meekness. We must next learn to have more zeal for what is to be done in the order of Divine Providence than for what we are actually doing. For if we are vexed, we are so because we are taken away from an occupation which we prefer to the one God would have us do. If we are much like Jesus, we will leave everything to obey God's will. Whatever we are asked to do will be, in our estimation, the best and most pleasant thing for us. Such a transformation can be brought about in us only if, out of love, we give our preference to what the will of God has decreed for every moment of our life; for God constantly varies our graces and our duties for His glory and our greater good. We are like a servant who gives up the service of an ordinary master for that of the sovereign himself. How encouraging is this thought and how well able to keep us in a state of meekness and peace in the midst of the vicissitudes of life! But of all the means the best is to keep constantly before our eyes our Lord's example, His desire and His good pleasure. The power of this means lies in its appeal to our natural sense of the beautiful, the good, and the true. To acquire meekness let us contemplate the Eucharist. To be well stocked with sweetness and meekness, let us eat the Divine manna which contains all sweetness. At Holy Communion let us gather our provision of meekness for the day; we need it so much. To be meek like our Lord and for love of Him, such is the aim of a soul that wants to live of the spirit of Jesus. O my soul, be meek toward thy trying neighbor as God, our Lord, and the Blessed Virgin are meek toward thee. Be meek toward him so that thy Judge may be meek toward thee; for, as our Lord told the Jews, "with what measure you mete, it shall be measured to you again." If thou reflectest on thy sins, on what thou hast deserved and still deservest, thou shouldst become all meekness and humility towards thy neighbor since thou thyself hast been treated by our Lord with so much kindness and meekness and patience and honor. Contact Us    DOWNLOAD THE IMAGE PLAIN, LARGE HOME------------------------HOLY EUCHARIST www.catholictradition.org/Eucharist/real-presence37.htm