For many people, the Beatitudes, contained in the Sermon on the Mount, which we read in the Gospel accounts of Sts. Matthew and Luke, resounds as heavenly music, as exactly that sought by the human soul. However, although the heart searches after God, quite often the intellect does not find Him.
For example, what do the words Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth, the words in praise of meekness contained in the Beatitudes mean? To what condition of the soul do they refer? Does not this assertion confirm what Christianity’s enemies and detractors say about It, i.e. that Christianity proposes reliance on the will of God in any given human situation instead of activism? The answer to that question may be found in the very Image of Christ Himself. In no wise did he ever call for any kind of moral perfection without Himself being an example of that perfection. Ultimately, being a Christian means being not merely a follower of His teachings, something that can be understood in a an abstract, spiritless way, but also emulating Christ in everything, within oneself nurturing and growing His Image, and acting as He did.
Was Christ meek? Undeniably so. However, that meekness was not some kind of easy tractability, not a manifestation of spiritual weakness. Standing before the judgement by Pilate, and upon Golgotha, he was both meek and resolute. He sought nothing for Himself, but at the same time, bore witness with His entire Being to the Truth He had revealed to the world. Truth is victorious only once it becomes patently obvious to all that the herald of that Truth is completely selfless and free from fear over his own fate.
To be meek is to be free from the evil and sinful world, to both have disdain for laws and at the same time to have a loving concern for the world, a world that both needs healing and can be healed.
Meekness encompasses a readiness to patiently endure suffering, and the capacity to remain joyful along that path of suffering. Only thus can one achieve "victory" in the loftiest sense of the word. It is not achieved through self-affirmation, but through selfless, sacrificial love. Ultimately, this is the direct antithesis of the worldly state of soul that considers victory as merely a crushing of all of one’s foes and rivals, as a successful defense of one’s claims. That victory which Christ sought after and which he accomplished (for He continues to attract people’s hearts, and will ever attract them to Himself) decisively challenges secular wisdom and its narrow understanding of man and his aspirations. It is the victory of good, self-denial, and selfless love. In direct contradiction of all earthly experience, the fact that all earthly truths evaporate, lose their attraction before the face of what the Gospels call the "treasure in the Heavens," is revealed in the depths of a believer’s heart. It is only that treasure that can truly nourish our souls. We can never be satiated with it, and will never be deceived by it. Moreover, in accordance with the holding in the Beatitudes, that "the meek shall inherit the earth," we find an absolute expression of that experiential truth, that to the human heart, selfless love has an irrepressible and irresistible attraction; therefore unselfish, selfless love itself is ultimately a force which is unconquerable.
This internal experience is more powerful than what worldly experience teaches. We know that by the action of a mystical force that works in the world, true victors are those who in the eyes of the world suffered defeat - the martyrs, for example.
Archpriest Victor Potapov
November, 2001