Here's the story behind this photograph:
I had given John-Paul my camera because I wanted him to take a picture of Teresa, Ronan and me. John-Paul loves to take pictures. Well, in the midst of his snapping away, Teresa broke out in a tantrum (I can't remember why...I think it was her sock coming off; she can be a little OCD). *Flash!* John-Paul snapped another picture and voila! here it is!
I'm sure you could come up with many clever captions for this photo...
Praying for meekness
For those moms who pray for patience in dealing with our crazy children, we're only praying half of the prayer.
We need to also pray for meekness. Really, this applies to anyone dealing with people who rub us the wrong way or irritate us.
What's the difference between patience and meekness?
Fr. John Hardon in The Modern Catholic Dictionary defines patience as:
A form of the moral virtue of fortitude. It enables one to endure present evils without sadness or resentment in conformity with the will of God. Patience is mainly concerned with bearing the evils caused by another. The three grades of patience are: to bear difficulties without interior complaint, to use hardships to make progress in virtue, and even to desire the cross and afflictions out of love for God and accept them with spiritual joy.
So patience gives us the strength to endure suffering inflicted upon us (think screeching toddler). Ideally, when we arrive at the perfection of this virtue, we will bear difficulties without even interior complaint or resentment; we will see and use the difficulty as an opportunity to progress in virtue; and finally, when we arrive at the perfection of patience, we will even desire to suffer afflictions for love of God and joyfully accept them.
This is possible - we have the grace of God to aid us and the example of the saints to inspire us. Do you believe that you can become perfectly patient? You can!
Meekness is a daughter virtue of the moral virtue of temperance. Sometimes, I think we wrongly associate meekness with weakness. Again, Fr. John Hardon defines it as:
The virtue that moderates anger and its disorderly effects. It is a form of temperance that controls every inordinate movement of resentment at another person's character or behavior.
St. Thomas Aquinas also points out that meekness moderates anger according to right reason; meekness keeps our temper under control. A person who is meek has great strength because they exercise great discipline and self-control upon their passions, specifically the passion of anger. A weak person erupts out of passion every time they are angered. Or if they don't outwardly have a conniption, inwardly they are by harboring resentment, grudges, complaints, etc...
St. Francis de Sales is often known as the "gentle saint" yet he struggled much with the passion of anger. St. Jane Frances Chantal and St. Vincent de Paul both said similarly about St. Francis de Sales that there was never known a heart so sweet, so gentle, so kind, so gracious and affable. It reveals how much he acquired this virtue of meekness! He says, “The person who possesses Christian meekness is affectionate and tender towards everyone: he is disposed to forgive and excuse the frailties of others; the goodness of his heart appears in a sweet affability that influences his words and actions, presents every object to his view in the most charitable and pleasing light.”
In working for the conversion of souls, St. Francis de Sales says:
If you wish to labor with fruit in the conversion of souls, you must pour the balsam of sweetness upon the wine of your zeal, that it may not be too fiery, but mild, soothing, patient, and full of compassion. For the human soul is so constituted that by rigor it becomes harder, but mildness completely softens it. Besides, we ought to remember that Jesus Christ came to bless good intentions, and if we leave them to His control, little by little He will make them fruitful.
I will recall this inspiring story of him and how his meekness moved the most hardened and impenitent hearts:
This holy Bishop (St. Francis de Sales) proceeded in this way himself with the most perverse sinners, striving to bring them to repentance in the gentlest ways possible, guiding himself by the great maxim that the spirit of meekness is the spirit of God, as the spirit of mortification is that of the Crucified. A man who had been guilty of enormous crimes once came to his confessional, and went on accusing himself of them with indifference and without any spirit of penitence. After bearing this for some time, the Saint began to weep, and when his penitent asked if anything had happened to him, he merely answered, "Go on." As he went on with the same ease as before, telling even greater sins, he wept again and again. On being urged to tell the cause, he at last said, in a voice full of compassion, "I weep because you do not weep." These words struck the heart of the sinner with compunction, and he became a true penitent. His gentleness manifested itself especially in his manner of giving advice, encouraging souls at the same time to advance to perfection. When he found them lost in sin and in dangerous occasions of it, he would indeed cry out: "Cut, break, rend, for there are certain bonds which we must not treat with ceremony, or stop to disentangle, but we must dissever and sunder them at once?' But on other occasions, where there was no danger, he would lead his peni- tents step by step to retrench superfluities and banish worldliness from their lives. "Do you not see," he wrote to a lady, "that vines are not pruned with the rough strokes of an axe, but with a fine-edged hook, one shoot after another? I have seen some statues which the sculptor worked on for ten years before they were perfect, cutting with chisels a little here and a little there, until he had removed all that was contrary to accuracy of proportion. No, certainly it is not possible to arrive in a day at the point you aspire to reach. It is necessary to gain one step today, another tomorrow, and to strive to become masters of ourselves by degrees; for this is no small conquest.
Beautiful!
Thus, we can absolutely apply this virtue of meekness within our families and interactions of every day life.
This basic truth from Proverbs always sticks with me when discipling the children (although it is not always easy to practice!):
"A mild answer turns back wratch; but a hard word stirs up anger."
- Proverbs 15:1
I can testify that not only when I practice patience with my kids, but also meekness by gentle, calm yet firm answers/disicplinary action, it makes allllll the difference. When John-Paul loses it, it has never helped when I lost it too.... But with meekness, one is not erupting out of a place of anger and emotion, taking it out on whomever is the object of their anger. It's controlled.
Easy? No. But is it worth practicing and acquiring this virtue? Yes. I would say we parents need meekness just as much as we need patience!
"O Jesus meek and humble of heart,
make my heart like unto Thine."